Friday, 22nd August 2008 Assignment

Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog. I am majoring in industrial engineering in Georgia Tech. Pardon me if my english is bad.

For the last 24-hours, here is the activity that I've done:

• E-mail my friends in Indonesia (written) 6:00 PM; ask their condition and experience in their university.
• Text messaging my parents (written) 10:00 PM; remind them to call my cellphone on 7:30 AM today, or I will not be awaken.
• Talk with my parents (oral) 3:15 PM; tell them about the class that I have.
• Read flyer about Georgia Tech Swarm (visual) 5:25 PM
• Chat with my friend using windows messenger (electronic); I ask him about his condition.
• Read my friend's blog in the internet (electronic) 6:15 PM; I read about her experience in her university.
• Using body language to my mother (non verbal) 08:20 AM; My mother asked me if I have math class today and I nodded, which means yes.

In Indonesia language, there is also some convention. For example, the word "I" in English, have several words in Indonesia language. They are:

• "saya"; this word is used between us and someone who is much older than us such as our parents and teachers.
• "aku"; this word is a little bit more informal. It is used between us and our brother, sister, cousin.
• "gw"; this word is informal. It is used between us and our friends.

So we use the word depends on our relationship with the people we speak to.

In Indonesia, there is a lot of tribe and race that have their own language. So, there is also some homophone words. For example is the word "pisang" in Indonesia, it means banana in Jakarta but for Toraja people, it means "jackfruit". Also, there is some words that sounds rude to some tribe or race.

Actually, there is almost no abbreviation in Indonesia language. When we teenagers communicate with our friends via text message or 3-mail or instant messaging, we rarely use abbreviation like in the United States. To shorten the word, we simply don't write the vocal alphabet. For example, the word "saya" is written "sy". We don't write the word only as its initial like IMO, LMAO, LOL in English. We sometime use some English abbreviation like BTW that means "by the way". But we seldom use it when we write e-mail or text message to our parents. We rarely use them because mostly they don't understand about what is written in it.

There is also body language. I think it is the same in almost all part of the world. For example, if we nod our head, that means "yes", if we raise our shoulder, it means we don't know.