Yesterday, on October 6, 2024, I spent the day immersed in One-Forty’s vibrant course environment. I started with the Indonesian financial management class in the morning, participated in a One-Forty donor event for ASML—a Dutch semiconductor company—at a separate venue, and wrapped up the day with the Chinese listening and speaking class with the Indonesian students in the afternoon. In this post, I’ll dive into my experiences and insights from the morning’s financial management session, where I observed the students’ diverse backgrounds, entrepreneurial aspirations, and the unique teaching approaches that made this class so impactful. Background: One-Forty’s Course Day for…
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Did you know that among Taiwan’s 23 million people, over 760,000 are migrant workers employed in low-skill, low-paying industries like domestic care and factory work? This means that 1 in 33 people in Taiwan is a migrant worker, most of whom come from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Migrant workers in Taiwan Vietnam: 256,576 Indonesia: 255,874 Philippines:154,027 Thailand: 67,954 Taiwan employs a “guest worker” system, a prevalent labour migration model in many Asian countries. Under this regime, migrant workers are hired on temporary contracts and are not allowed to immigrate or become naturalized citizens. This approach is common in…
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One-Forty and the Career Center Vision I’m now entering my third week in Taiwan, working with One-Forty while finalizing my project with IOM Indonesia. While I am thrilled with the crisis preparedness module I developed for Indonesian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) abroad, that’s a topic for another day. What I really want to share is how IOM’s Reintegration Handbook has helped me launch my new project: creating One-Forty’s very own reintegration handbook for Indonesian migrant workers. One-Forty has this amazing vision to create a Career Center for its migrant students and alumni. It’s not just a lofty idea either—this would…
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You landed at the airport, exited the gate and saw a woman holding a placard “TKI berkumpul di sini” (female migrant workers meeting point). You assumed you’d stop and wait there. I followed the English signs because I could speak English. Thankfully, almost all signs are bilingual. I had to get the metro card and train ticket to the city centre. I had to follow a Line chat from my landlord with my 30kg suitcase, down an alleyway and into an old building. I had to carry that heavy suitcase up 4 flights of stairs. That was only the beginning.…
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Yesterday I met with Jacquie and Uli – mentor and fellow mentee of Sun Walking’s REMS Leadership Program, respectively. Uli comes from a completely different background. He is passionate about plants as a micro subject and humans’ relationship with nature as a macro subject. Speaking about bird migration and agrotourism in Costa Rica made me think about the importance of understanding the ecosystem of the population that you are interested in. So much of what we can do to help a population thrive comes down to paying attention to the details: what is the ecosystem that they are part of? …
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You would think the first colour To pluck out of the palette Would be a salty odour Besides a mermaid’s palate; But the sea is barely blue Instead, she’s a continuum Of yellows to greenish hues Hundreds of yarn on a loom How does the eye fail to see The minuscule lines of light Tracing the crevices of the sea? It‘s only dawned on my sight With the strokes of this sprite
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The Bangka-Belitung province is located east of South Sumatra and it is easily accessible by plane from Jakarta. Return flights tend to cost just over Rp 1,000,000 and if you want to reduce that carbon footprint (which I am very guilty of), there is a boat (PT Pelni Lawit)that leaves twi ce a month from Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta to Tanjung Pandan, the main city of Belitung. I heard that it’s cheap to go by boat, but not many people know about it. I suggest looking into PT Pelni Lawit website for more information about the price and the…
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Tak kenal maka tak sayang. Tak sayang maka tak cinta. Knowing leads to caring. Caring leads to love. – Indonesian proverb Upon choosing this proverb, I struggled to translate it into English. It’s a well-known proverb in Indonesia and it basically asks this question: “If you don’t try to get to know someone, how can you care about them?” Equally, if you don’t care about them, how can you love them? The reason why it’s tricky to translate is because of these words: tahu vs kenal (to know) and sayang vs cinta (to love). What’s the difference? Tahu vs Kenal…
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Kacang lupa kulitnya. Peanuts forget their shells. – Indonesian proverb This proverb is used to describe someone who has forgotten its roots. I’d just like to share some useful phrases to talk about our background, including our family, hometown, nationality, and heritage. Latar belakang: background 1. Kamu lahir di mana? = What’s your birthplace? You [were born] where? lahir (verb) = to be born Saya lahir di Bandung. I was born in Bandung. 2. Kamu lahir tanggal berapa? = What’s your date of birth? You [were born] date which? tanggal (noun) = date Saya lahir tanggal 31 Juli 1991. I…
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The word linguistics is composed of two morphemes linguist and –ics. The base morpheme linguist derives from the Latin word lingua (“language” or “tongue”) whilst the suffix -ics tends to generate nouns that refer to fields of knowledge and practice. Does that explain anything about linguistics? No, anyone can google that. Does it sound ‘linguisticky’? Probably, especially if you trace back lingua to ,the Old Latin ,dingua, ,which has even been analysed down to its Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root. But that’s not linguistics. That’s etymology (the study of the origins of words), and it’s only a minuscule aspect of the whole…
