When I was in my early teen, my father bought a lot of Indonesian Agricultural Publications. On how to raise rabbits, fish, sheep or how to grow chillies, lemongrass to how to extract essential oils. There's even a book on how to train dogs. That's after he met and befriended an Indonesian cook at his workplace, Bapak Deddy. Before that, most of the agricultural articles were from Universities from United States like OSU (Oklahoma State University) and TAMU (Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University) or other state universities in the prairie region. Sometimes from 4-H too.
Agricultural practices in this region are different from the States. Climate-wise it's hotter. And food regulations are different. So most articles are on basic agricultural stuffs which are applicable here, such as composting, building water well, garden sheds, solar drying or energy efficiency.
Bapak Deddy showed him some of the books and in a month, our book 'population' doubled. My old man ordered not less than a thousand of those books. Indonesian is not our first language, so my old man also ordered a big Indonesian-English dictionary.
In a way, it expanded my Indonesian vocabulary. Sometimes it helped me. In my former school, there were 3 lecturers from Indonesia. My favourite is an Occupational Health Doctor, I do envy his job. Not wearing white coat, not using any stethoscope, doesn't look like a doctor and always on a field trip. I'm also one of his favourite student too. He likes to tease me. If only all doctors are like that.
Another doctor is a pulmonalogist. He's an expert on respiratory health, so he can't ditch his stethoscope. He's educated in the Netherlands so some of his words are 'different'. We never heard the word PROBANDUS and ANAMNESIS before. He said it's commonly used in a continental medical universities. We use patients all the time. One day, he had a problem with explaining a rubber stopper. So he reverted to Indonesian. KARET. Stopper made from KARET.
"I forget the word, but in Indonesian, we called it karet" "What do you call it?"
Then I replied. "Oh, rubber stopper. Karet tu rubber kan Prof?"
"Yes, rubber stopper"
My Indonesian saved the day.
The third is a paediatrician. All I can say about him is he is strict.
I watched a lot of Indonesian TV too. Thanks to my pop's 6 feet parabola. Besides watching TV is do watch Indonesian YouTuber. Mostly their cooking vlogs. And not to forget Sacha Stevenson.
Yesterday, I was shopping for some vegetables. In this city, Some of the TKI works in retail. Even our hypermarket hire TKI. Some said, when comparing this little city with the big city, "The little city is like Los Angeles or any cities in SoCal, while the big city is like New York or any city by the Eastern seaboard". I'm quoting my best friend. With this equation, our TKI are like Mexican working in San Diego or Los Angeles.
While picking my vegetables, I said sing-songy "wortel, jahe, jeruk dan tomat" (carrots, ginger, lemon and tomato, those were in my shopping list as I need them to cook vegetable curry) The shop assistant heard me and smiled. "I heard you.., singing in Indonesian"
I wish one day I'll visit Indonesia.
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*TKI = Tenaga Kerja Indonesia, overseas Indonesian worker. Analogous to OFW which is Overseas Filipina/Filipino Workers
Probandus, definition in the link below
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/probandus
Indonesian YouTuber I follow
Sacha Stevenson
http://www.youtube.com/user/sasaseno
Masak.tv
http://www.youtube.com/user/masaktv
Kokiku Tv
http://www.youtube.com/user/KokikuTv
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