Self Understanding

Translation: 

Bullshit! RT @tempodotco: Nachrowi : Only Local People Understands Jakarta 

Hello hello…!

Hehehe, actually I was quite amazed when I read Mr. Ridwan Kamil’s tweet above. Why? So simple, but meaningful. The point is, sometimes people can’t understand themselves, and other people might be more recognize what you have; potentials, problems, everything.

Even for our own self, somehow we cannot understand until somebody told us what’s happen in our self, for example a doctor tell you that you got this and that diseases, or a teacher tell you that you have strengths in this or that field… something like that.

In larger scale, a city, or state… maybe its own citizen cannot understand what they have. Like me, as a citizen of Yogyakarta, somehow I don’t know what is the beauty of Tugu as I everyday passing it and nothing special in it, seems so ordinary for me. But a visitor, who is outsider can recognize the beauty or special thing in it from their point of view. And as an Indonesian, I speak mostly in Indonesian language, nothing special, it may be cool and challenging to learn another language (like English, Japanese, Korean or even Thai) rather than learn Indonesian language deeper. What’s the point of learning Indonesian since I already speak in it every day? Not interesting. But for outsider, it may be very interesting to learn Indonesian language (as I ever met Vietnamese student in Balai Bahasa around one year ago, who study Indonesian language), and somehow, they know more about it more than me, Indonesian language native speaker.

Ok, enough with the example, maybe I already running out of the context, hehehe.

According to the tweet, I agree with Mr. Kamil, maybe he think that somehow the citizen themselves are not really understand with their conditions, or maybe don’t really care, as I explained, the citizens may catch it as usual things, nothing special, nothing to be improved, repaired, reserved, and so on. Jakarta, as we know, a very large city (at least in Indonesia), with the population composition is now very mixed, who you mean by local people there? People in there are originally come from many backgrounds, from many parts of Indonesia, or even from many countries. So who are the local people? People living there for many generations? They may be also doesn’t even really care about the city itself.

Sometimes, it is true that the local people understand more about the place they living in, but sometimes they’re not. Be open minded and listen to other people comments, it will improve you better, I’m sure.