Intelligent Exchange

A week in the university and I've made wonderful developments in the field of conversation. There are students from every part of this huge archipelago; each speaks with his/her own dialect, if not language. For a person with pathological Jakarta-centricity like myself, it could be a somewhat dizzying experience. It doesn't actually hinder the creation of smart conversations, but it does complicate things a little bit. Furthermore, there are also differences in our way of thinking and of expressing our thoughts. Sometimes such factors -not problems- can produce laughable results.

Last Saturday I was in my English class. Inbetween sessions, we had short breaks so we can stretch our limbs and wait for the next teacher to come. One of the guys came from Jogjakarta, which is why his Javanese accent is so strong and he can speak Javanese fluently in all styles: ngoko (informal), kromo (polite), and kromo inggil (the most polite). Honestly, I simply took words I never heard as kromo words, but that's not the topic. That day, we were having a lively conversation when it accidentally changed into a conversation in Javanese.

He kept talking Javanese to the others, who can understand the language. Feeling left out, I wanted to get into the conversation again, and maybe show off my informal-slash-poor Javanese fluency too. Sooo, when he asked others whether they can speak Javanese too, I confidently answered "Gue juga iso" which means "I can (speak Javanese) too", expecting an excited response from him. Then came nothing...until I realized something. Apparently, the word gue is not Javanese at all. As a Jakarta-centric person, my mind automatically set gue as the default word for I without thinking about what language I'm speaking. Juga (also/too) is not genuinely Javanese either. I only got iso (can) correctly. Being a kind person, or just feeling sorry for my stupidity, he corrected the sentence: "Aku yo iso". Yeah, I totally got that.

Today, I had a so-called "scientific" debate, in which I was the presenter/defendant of my group's experiment on falling objects and terminal velocity. My opponent -and yes, we call them the "opponent"- turned out to be a physics olympiad who should've gone international if not for some reasons. Just my luck. The presentation proceeded well, even though I failed to stick to "Bahasa Indonesia yang baik dan benar". Then, it's his turn to debate whatever he could. He did.

He asked, "You have admitted that the data were not very accurate, even though you repeated each experiment quite a few times. Can you guarantee that the data are valid?" What the what!? That was a mean low blow that, IMO, didn't hit any target. Validity is not in my hands. Validity is in the hands of anyone who is concerned with the experiment, and it was up to them to say either it is or is not valid, according to their standards of accuracy. I unenthusiastically replied, "We tried everything we could to be as accurate as hell and the data we got showed consistency". I deeply regretted it. I should've deal him another low blow like "This is my experiment on which I worked my ass off. It's not your business whether it is 'valid' or not; your question is pointless and useless. Thank you. Zip it." That would've been great and I would've looked so cool on the modest stage.

Anyway, the rest of the debate went smoothly flow-wise. It kept flowing despite my ignorance on the subject and constant guessing to answer questions from both the opponent and the lecturer/moderator. I just had to answer all the questions. Not looking stupid is only an extra, which I didn't get. Yet, I feel really proud of myself today for surviving through such intelligent exchanges.