Third Week in January 2011

Hi folks!

Long time no see, last week I was so busy. These two weeks, I've been finally visiting Toastmaster clubs! The first club is Jakarta Motivators, which holds the meeting every Wednesday at Mayapada Building, Sudirman. This club is very friendly, and one of its prominent member (I have no idea whether he's also the founder of the club), Mr. Wardiman Djojonegoro, former Indonesian Minister of Education. The people are sooo friendly, I really like them.

The next day (Thu 13/1), I visited another club called The British Toastmaster, which holds the meeting every 2nd and 4th Thursday in the Mercantile Club at WTC Building, Sudirman. This club is rather exquisite, with nice place and a native English guardian (Mike Nicholson, an HR guy). What I like from this club is the members are rather advanced in English, and that will help me a lot to master the language.

At Saturday (15/1), I went to my French class, and was shocked that my former professeur has gone to Balikpapan, and he would be replaced by the a male and female professeurs. That Saturday was the male's turn. He was OK, but was also rather unsympathetic, since he seemed has this own point of view and wanted to impose it to les étudiants. Mais il est agréable en general.

The following week, I failed to attend the Toastmaster meeting at Allianz and Parousia Hall - Plaza Semanggi. Too bad, but I can catch them up later. I visited the Jakarta Motivators for the second time and I finally met the great patron of the club, Mr. Wardiman Djojonegoro. I also met some good friends (a girl from CIMB Niaga who seems to possess a good heart, and a boy who just moved to Balikpapan but managed to visit his club).

Anyway, the great event was on Sunday (23/1), watching Russian movie! A friend of mine, a Russian who works at Schlumberger invited me and a friend from CCF (my French class) to watch a Russian movie. He also invited one of his friend, a Spanish woman, who worked at the UN. She was really amazing, she speaks French, and she said that she wanted to attend her college majoring in history, until her father advised her otherwise. You can't imagine how tremendous my joy was, when finally I met someone who shares a similar passion to mine..

The Russian guy made us blini (a traditional Russian pancake) which has cultural significance to the Russian, i.e. they make it on special (mostly religious) occasions. He prepared us various filling, such as sour cream, Russian honey, strawberry jam, and cherry jam. And he was a great cook! Here's the pic.

The was great too, the title was transliterated as "Without Dowry" (I have to tell you that the movie had no subtitle, so during the movie, my good Russian friend did this "real-time translation" for us). It was about a girl who came from (it seemed) an impoverished noble family, who had problems regarding her love, as a rich man courted her but left her in the end, and another man who worshipped her but turned out as a madman. A tragic story.. But I was very happy to enjoy a new cultural experience =)

See you next week, folks!