Globalization Era Has No Limit, But Privacy Should Have!

Now it is easy to understand someone’s feeling and to find where he or she is going to do and to go. Also, you do not need to pay for taxi fee or to buy ‘something’ for people you want to meet with to share your happiness or even your sadness. There is another simple and easy way to do Silaturahmi (say hello) without meeting face to face with someone: The more you learn about social media networking on the Internet, the more friends and relatives you will find.

Putting a name that you want to search for, then you will find that person and you can make him or her as your friend on this kind of social media networking: Facebook. It is the most famous social media networking in the world beside Twitter, and now most of Indonesian people in all ages can use it very well. Type what is inside your mind, and then all of your friends will read it.

Instead, you notice or not, those kinds of social media networking may disturb our privacy.

Is that statement for me?

The presence of social media networking makes us unconsciously sensitive. Although some people think that social media networking is really helpful to express what is inside our mind and our feeling, it can be a problem that people indirectly tend to be sensitive in what others people say because some of them always tell what they feel and they do on the box that we call as ‘what’s on your mind’ on Facebook or ‘what’s happening’ on twitter. So when others people who have a relation with us put a strange statement on their status update, we will wonder to whom that statement may refer to.

“I have had a fight on Facebook. I was in a desperate condition then someone commented my status by annoying words. Maybe he felt that my status was referred to him.” Dicky, a third year student of Sekolah Tinggi Akuntansi Negara (STAN), confessed. He is one of BlackBerry users who always frequently surfs the Internet and use the social media networking to share his feeling to his virtual friends than to ‘the real people’. Unfortunately, he got the result of kind of misunderstanding that we cannot deny at all because of sensitivity.

Oh, they spy on me!

Other people may think that social media networking gives us lots of new friends from other parts of Indonesia or even the world and connects us with old friends who we have not seen them for a long time, but it is beyond a question today that ‘the new friendship’ may lead to a threat.

Some people agree that we will not get a threat as long as we are wise to put our information on the social media networking, but how about the people who have a hurt feeling? We do not know if our saying hurts people or not, but after the presence of social media networking is getting familiar in society, some people use it for expressing how they feel about us about their disappointment and they do as if there were no more good ways to ask people to apologize.

It is easy now to threaten people in this high-technology era. Making a profile in kind of social media networking does not need an identity card, so one person can have two or more profiles in social media networking with different names, different biography, and even different faces for their profile pictures. For instance, you will find lots of ‘Britney Spears’ on Facebook Search Lists.

“He was following all of my updated status from my profile on social media networking to know about me, and then he responded my updated status with terrible words”, said Gemma, a supervisor of Sales and Marketing Department at PT. Dirgantara Indonesia (Indonesian Aerospace). This businessman who frequently uses his social media networking on the virtual world was followed by his old friend who actually had been hurt by him long time ago, but he never realised it.

People who we do not realise that we have made them hurt may take an action to disturb our life by using other names of their profile of social media networking that they have made. However we do not have any relations no more with them, they will give us a threat, or they even may curse us. We will be threatened by their comments and our life is disturbed. Now, is our privacy still safe?

Should not I be on my age?

We may be different from we are like in the real world and in the virtual world. People who talk less may always share their thoughts on social media networking. It is certainly true that we can share everything about us and we can share our thoughts there, but there are always people who have wrong opinion about what we are saying.

‘The different generation can be one of the factors that lead to the different perception. It results in misunderstanding’, said Ardian, a seventh semester student of Physics at Padjajaran University (UNPAD). He notices that there are levels of ages on his Facebook account and he has got a warning from his parents who are also in his friend list. They looked at Ardian as if he was a naughty boy, because they saw a joke that Ardian and his friends made on his profile on social media networking. “That was a joke that the young always do actually”, he added. Maybe they are conservative, but considering the facts that there is different generation of people in our social media networking is also important to say a statement on our ‘box’ wisely. You do not want people to have wrong opinion about you, do not you?

Thus, privacy has to have a limit to publish on social networking if you do not want to get sensitivity, threat or wrong assessment from your virtual friends. Even you are a frequently internet user, somehow you have to realize that this is one of media that can be surfed by internet network, so people can find everything that is available on our profile. Using your social media networking wisely is a way to avoid the bad effect of social media networking . All of bad effects that may happen to you depend on you; how you use your social media networking and how you react to your virtual friends. At least, you are ready to face all of the possibility that may happen to you.

Opinion: The Failure of Ketika Cinta Bertasbih 1

Ketika Cinta Bertasbih I (certificate Teenagers). Habiburrahman El-Shirazy has created many great stories for many good and best seller novels and he is well-known with his inspiring novels whose novels are mostly adapted into several great and successful movies, but Ketika Cinta Bertasbih I (KCB I) is not one of them. This is a kind of romantic drama movie, but you will get nothing whether there is more romantic action or not. This movie took place in Mesir and Java, but the new setting which took place at Cairo, Mesir, cannot give unique and challenging experience to the audiences. This is like a great expectation that the great story will be shown in that film. From the title itself it can be stated that the film can awake the viewers’ spiritual sense. In fact, the concept of the movie, the elected casts, and the content of the story are the factors that make the movie failed in satisfying the audiences’ expectation.

First, this movie production has failed in making the concept of this movie. This movie has reached the record as the most expensive movie that ever produced in Indonesia with its budget of 20 Billion Rupiahs. The movie production has taken lots of time and money. They did the reality show in every region in Indonesia in order to have the suitable casts. They casted every cast who applied themselves to be a part of this movie level by level for about six months and it took a high budgeting. In fact, this movie production is seemed that they just had built a great promotion, a great concept in making the reality show and high budgeting with no new experiences to the audiences. In addition, although the movie took place in Mesir which took high cost, it cannot give big influence for the audiences and the film itself. The point is that the big concept that the movie production made is just like a waste of money.

Second, the main casts that are elected failed in rolling each characterization. Unfortunately, the main casts cannot present the attractive actions at all. Despite the fact that the casts had faced level by level in the reality show, and they had faced the casting examination as well, the result is nothing. Although all of the elected casts had examined by expert actors and actresses with good casting materials, they couldn’t act like them. Also, the elected casts are just a waste of talent. The role play that the casts took cannot give any challenges to the audiences. What the audiences know is that the elected casts must be good casts because they had passed the casting test until the last level and they had eliminated other applicants in the reality show. Unfortunately, it was far from the audiences’ expectation and it was not as interesting and challenging as the audiences read the novel.

The last and the most crucial weakness of this movie is from the content of the story that cannot send the main and exact message to the audiences at all. Ketika Cinta Bertasbih film is about a man who has to struggle for his life by being a meatball and ‘tempe’ (fermented soybean) seller while studying as a student of Al Azhar Cairo Mesir. He has got a scholarship from Indonesian government for his intelligence. However, he began to face a problem when his father passed away and his mother is ill. He then faces the difficulties in finishing his study because he should earn much money after his father death. He has to pay his two sisters school fee and his family’s daily needs. Actually, that is the story really present more about the poverty of the man and his love story. When the film goes into the middle part, there is no special thing. Until the end of the film, the story is still vague. Surprisingly, the story is to be continued to the next film, Ketika Cinta Bertasbih 2. Nonetheless, the storyline is too simple. There is no adventurous thing that commonly can be found in many films. Then it can be felt that the film is empty. No clear message in that film. The story has never reached on top climax. The problem is also not solved. Overall, the story just talks about the suffering and the sacrifice of the main actor without any challenging things. It is a shame when the film is failed to represent the whole story from its best seller book. It is so annoying because the film is cut if the story in the first part is unclearly defined.

In short, the film is failed to send its message because of some reasons. First, the concept of this movie production is poor because the casts who are caught from the reality show competition are too amateurish for being the cast of the film with a big budget and a great promotion. They failed in representing each cast in that story. Moreover, from their characterization, their capabilities are poor. Their acting does not seem natural. The most crucial thing is that the story never reaches the top conflict and the story is too flat and simple. So, do not spend your time by seeing this film if you do not get loss! We do not enjoy watching this film at all.

Improving the Use of English by Reading HELLO

In order to identify how influent this magazine to improve readers’ ability in using English in their dailyy activities, we selected and analyzed this local English magazine called HELLO. We found that from its educative and understandable feature’s lines on the cover to its content of fun English articles, HELLO magazine is educating and entertaining, whose target audience is students or younger, aged 10-16. To analyze HELLO, we investigated the overall effect of the magazine by studying the cover and its features, and the table of contents of several issues. Moreover, we read the articles in the magazine and examined the writing style, including the grammatical structure, and tone and attitude.

First, from the appearance, we as the readers may underestimate this magazine by snatching its cover on the first sight. The appearance of its cover was unsatisfied for the readers. The quality of the picture was blurry and not attractive and it looked like in unfinished editing, so it seemed that the editors worked in a rush. Another weakness is that they put the picture not in a right place which could be seen in the April 2002 edition, so when the audiences read the name of the magazine from the cover that should be “hello”, it became “hell”. However, beyond those weaknesses, this magazine offered high quality English-reading materials that were suitable for general readers, both male and female. Moreover, the feature’s lines on the cover represented well for introducing the content with well-structured use of English.

The second aspect that we found is the table of content which demonstrated that the focus of this magazine is how to improve our English from knowing about what is happening in abroad by reading entertaining and educating articles in this magazine. For instance, in the January 2001 edition, it told about “Sarah Michelles Gellar”, “The Angels of the New Millenium Movie”, and “The Development of AC Milan”. Also, in the April 2002 edition, the headline was about Cameron Diaz. Most of the articles were about the hollywood artists, movies, and music. It seemed that by reading this magazine, not only do the readers read the article, but they can also know better about the people there who use English as their first languange.

Another point related to the content’s appearance of this magazine is that on the previous edition in 2002, the use of papers was quite simple because they used to use monochrome papers, but in the following editions, they used A4 papers for the magazine. Its contents are used to be black and white that were rare of pictures, but then they made the content colorful and full of pictures because of the readers’ requests. This magazine did not provide any advertisement, so when the publishers would like to make the magazine more colourful, they increased its price. From this effort of the publisher to reach the market target, it means that this magazine always tries to comply the readers’ needs of English materials. For every plus, there is also a minus. The posistion of the quiz form that should be cut in this magazine is not put in the right place. So, if the readers cut the quiz form, it will also affect to the useful article behind it. But, the most powerful thing of this magazine that bet all of those weaknesses is the presence of the educative feature called Language Forum. In this feature, the writers discussed the confusing words that came from the readers’ letters. For instance, in the January 2001 edition, feature were disccussing the confusing words between “beside and besides”, and in the December 2001 edition, it discussed the confusing words between “machine and engine”.

In addition, from the content of this magazine, as its aims to provide youth English learners lots of good reading materials, each article in hello was quite long and very detail. The use of pictures or colorful visual effects in most articles were very minimum; however, it did not reduce the readers curiosity to read the whole articles. For example an old movie called The Princess Diaries was reviewed perfectly by the writer in a two-page article. “A Lesson to be a Graceful Queen” (p.12-13), the title of the article, reviewed the movie by combining lots of idiomatic expressions or phrases that enrich the reader knowledge of English. Here is one example of the paragraphs that uses an idiomatic expression:

[A] shy San Fransisco teenager Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) is thrown for a loop, from out of the blue, when she learns the astonishing news that she is a real princess (… par.1)

In this case, the meaning of “out of the blue” is related with British culture which means that something comes suddenly or unexpectedly. Moreover, the other articles in the magazine use formal language in transferring the idea of the article, such as “Tips to Study abroad” (p.26-27) and “The ABC of Translation” (p. 30 and 50). So, it is clearly shown that the editor of the magazine wanted the reader to understand English better after reading the articles that were provided in each edition.

Besides, we critized the grammatical structure, the tone and attitude of the magazine. As an English magazine that concerns in providing good English articles, most passages were written in a narative way. Therefore, the grammatical structure of each passage mostly combined the compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, and the use of simple sentences were almost rare. For instance, the use of those structures can be seen in the April 2002 edition that stated, “She was right when she thought that it was a matter of luck” (2002, par. 8). Another point that encouraged our critical thinking was from the tone and the attitude of this magazine. The tone and the attitude of this magazine were attractive, persuasive, and informative. It was attractive because each edition wrote interesting articles about Hollywood artists, for example in the April 2002 edition entitled “Cool and Independent Cameron Diaz” (p.6-7). Another article entitled “Kang Guru Magazine” is very persuasive because the content of the article asked the readers to know more about the Kang Guru Magazine by buying it. In addition, HELLO is also informative because we could get lots of information, which can be seen in the Desember 2001 edition called “Effect Ways to Improve Conversation Skill” (p. 44-45) or in the January 2001 edition called “The Unforgettable England”.

In short, from studying the cover to critisizing its tone and attitude, we conclude that the important point from this magazine is that the appearance is not a matter of problem to produce reading materials for those who want to learn English. This statement is supported by the evidence which shows that this magazine still has loyal readers who have been with it for about 18 years (2002, p. 1). The saying of “Do not judge a book by its cover” is very suitable for this magazine. This magazine can influence the readers to improve English by reading its attractive, informative, persuasive articles.

My Father as My favorite Idol

Masduki. It’s my father’s name. Simple but as a proverb says what the meaning of the name is. He was born on June 6th , 1965. He was educated at Sukaresmi Elementary School, Cikarang Junior High School and at Lemah Abang Senior High School. In senior high school, he met my mother, Minah. They were falling in love. They sent a letter to each other until they graduated from senior high school. They still hid their relationship, because he didn’t want to get married before he earned money by himself. He studied just until senior high school, because he wanted to work. He made a small effort. He built some boarding house to rent. Step by step, his effort became success and earned a lot of profits. In twenty five of his age, he married with my mother. And now, they live together in Cikarang with three children. I, Pujiana Nurul Hikmah as the first child, Hidayatullah Nurul Muttaqien, and the youngest daughter, Siti Rabiatul Adawiyah.

My father is a pretty plump, tall man. He has dark complexion, square face, almond shaped eyes, quite bushy eye-brows, pretty thick lips, pug nose, and short black hair. He was one of the most decisive, determined and self confident people. His characters are decisive, determined, organized, and reliable. That is why he can be success now. But he is humorous too.

My father never does something which is not useful. He always spends his time to learn everything. He looks something not only in one side, but he looks something in many sides. “Don’t judge something by its cover, maybe there are many sides whom we don’t know that can we look and learn”, he said. He never wears something which is luxurious or glamour. He doesn’t characterize himself as a rich man or higher level than someone whom he meets or talks. He is very modest.

He always teaches his children to be polite and kind to friends too. He told that looking for true friend is not easy as some people think. “Someday, if we get a critical situation, and there is not family member or relative that can help you, just only a true friend that will help you”, he said. And he never forgets to ask us to pray. He is a religious person. He always asks his family and relatives to study further about the law of Islam like Aqidah, Fiqih and Akhlakul Karimah. He sometimes be serious and sometimes makes some jokes. His jokes always make everyone who listen it laugh. His life is not always good. If his life gets hard, he always prays and repents. He thinks maybe there is something wrong that he made. He is a good model father. I want to look for my future husband whose characters are like my father.