Issue 8 April 2002

When I was studying in Melbourne I went shopping with my Indonesian friend.  As soon as we got home, my friend opened the tins of meat we bought and started to fry it.  Soon after, another friend joined us and the 2 started to eat.  Suddenly I looked at the back of the tin and saw a small picture of a dog in a circle - yes, it was dog food!  I decided not to tell my friends, but didn't eat any of the food myself.  Instead, I drank 2 glasses of soft drink, but soon got a headache.  My friend looked at the bottle and laughed when he saw the words ‘ginger ale'.  "That's why you have got a headache!", my friends laughed.  "Don't be so happy, mate",  I said.  "Do you know what you have just eaten?"       (Djoko Susanto, ADS9) You needn't have worried, Djoko, ginger ale does not contain any alcohol.  It's a bit like Green Sands in Indonesia.  I do recommend that you check labels carefully before buying anything though!   Learning English In Indonesia I was friendly with some boys who rented out surfboards on the beach.  One day they came up to me and said "Sarah, there's a word that Australians say and we don't know what it means.  When they come up to us they say, "Iwannagedaboard".  We can't find it in the dictionary.  This time I had to laugh because there was no way they were going to find that in the dictionary... the Australians were saying "I want to get a board", but were speaking really fast! (Sarah Wood, IALF exchange teacher)  When I first came to Bali I knew no Indonesian, but I was keen to speak it so usually I experimented with sentences by guessing and putting words together.  One day I was sitting on the beach and a lady came up to me offering to sell me a sarong.  I wanted to tell her that I had no money but I didn't know how so I decided to guess.  "Saya tidak orang" I said.  The lady stared at me in horror and touched me on the arm!  Realising I wasn't a ghost, she started to laugh and told me that it was "uang" and that the word for "to have" was "punya".  I'll never forget my Indonesian lesson that day, so the moral is: don't be afraid to make mistakes - it's a great way of learning!  (Sarah Wood, IALF exchange teacher)

Sweet Apology During my short course in Bali I went shopping at one of the shopping malls near the school.  It was the first time I had ever been shopping in a foreign country.  After paying for my goods, I waited at the cash desk for my change (around a few hundred rupiah), but the cashier said "sudah".  I thought this was a question so I replied "Ya".  I carried on waiting for my change and eventually asked the cashier "Where is my change?"  She looked very confused so I rephrased my question to "Where is my money - the 300 rupiah?"  She understood but just pointed to a small plastic announcement stuck on the cash register that said "Please apologise.  Small change will be replaced with candies".  Yes, I had three candies with my receipt but I thought they were complimentary of the mall.  I was rather angry about the change, especially when I thought I had to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the mall.  Later I found out the mall had mistranslated the word apologise and what they meant was sorry.  Both words are ‘maaf' in Indonesian.  So, they were sorry they had to give me candies instead of change, and I didn't have to apologise! (SBIB student) Here are the answers to the quiz.  How well did you do? It comes from the word Antipodes, which refers to Australia and New Zealand 900 km A long, wooden, musical instrument Canberra British Uluru Food from the outback eg kangaroo, emu It's a mammal with a bill January 26th John Howard