Having More Than One Blog: Good or Bad?

Do you have a blog or personal website on the internet? Since a couple years ago, blog has been so popular among the people that today almost everybody has his own blog. Some people create blog and function it just like his diary or daily journal. They write their daily’s experiences, even small things such as what they eat at lunch and where they go on weekend. However, some others write more serious topics. No matter what the people write on their blogs, it is obvious that blog becomes today’s people lifestyle.

Now, let me ask you how many blog you have. I have seven blogs (or personal website if you want to call them so), excluding my facebook account (because some people consider it microblog). How about you? You have more than one blog just like I do? Or you only have one? Or you haven’t had any? If the latest is your answer, I recommend that you should create one immediately. If you don’t do it, some people probably will call you an old-fashioned person. Do you want to be called so?

Are You Addicted to Modern Convenience?

Have you ever found that electricity in your house was turned off? Or your internet connection went down? Or your computer didn’t work due to a serious problem? Or you lost your mobile phone? Or you had no car, nor motor bike, to ride?

What did you feel when you found yourself in such situations? Perhaps you said: “Oh no, I can’t live without all this.” Or you said: “Oh no, I can do nothing in such condition.” If that was what happened to you, I’m afraid that you are addicted to the modern convenience.

However, I can understand that many people – or even most of them – are now addicted to the modern convenience. The reason is quite simple: because they are not accustomed to live without the convenience. They always use the convenience in their daily life, as if the convenience were a part of them. They work, study, have leisure, have fun, take a bath, and even sleep using the convenience. Therefore, when they lose one of the convenience, they feel that everything becomes in trouble.

Is Woman in Islam Oppressed?

There are some stereotypes addressed unfairly to Islam and muslims. Instead of coming from authoritative sources, the stereotypes just appear all the time on media. Yes, this is a kind of ‘media game’. Those who control the media will control the information. And it’s obvious that those who don’t like Islam and muslims – due to some reasons – take control of most leading media. As a result, muslims always become victims. They are suspected of injustice, oppression, extremism, and such things that actually don’t belong to them.

One of the stereotypes is that woman in Islam is oppressed. Many people – especially in the West – consider that muslims along their history really fit this stereotype. They argue that some sacred texts in Islam – ie. Al-Qu’ran and As-Sunnah – really contain teachings that oppress woman in her life.

They can not accept several things related to woman issues, such as following: 1) daughter only receive inheritance (legacy) 50 percent less than son, 2) a man can marry more than one woman, whereas a woman can marry only one man at a time, 3) woman has to cover almost all of her body parts using hijab, except when she is at home. They consider all these things are oppression of woman. Are they right?

How to Find Your Life Partner: An Unanswered Question

Allah creates everything in pairs: male and female, dark and bright, good and bad, etc. We all also know that humans have natural tendency to have life partners. Biologically, humans are similar to animals in that both have sexual desire. For this reason, both are in need of having sex. However, humans are moral creatures. Allah gives a rule that one can only have sex after marriage.

Marriage itself, more than a way to find sex, is a way to express love. If a man really loves a woman, he will marry her. If he says that he loves her but he doesn’t want to marry her, he is likely to only use her. Marriage is also a way to build partnership as well as to have kids and family. For muslims, marriage is a way for the couple to follow the Sunnah, hoping that Allah will give them the best reward in here and here-after. In Islam, marriage is a way to perfect the Deen. In conclusion, marriage has many purposes, and sex is only one of them.

For marriage has many purposes as mentioned above, it is always considered very important in one’s life. And for this reason, most people don’t want to seek their life partners hastily. They will consider many things before deciding to accept someone to be their life partner. The things are – in general – can be classified into two: physical factors and non-physical factors.

Indonesian Birocracy: Putting Simple Things Complicated

Birocracy is always a disgusting word to hear. What is in your mind when you hear that word? Many of you will imagine a kind of inefficiency, difficulty, collusion, corruption, and so on. What you imagine is not totally wrong. In fact, birocracy in Indonesian administration is sort of that image.

Give an example, if one wants to get his Citizen ID Card, the officers usually charge him more than it should be. Another example, if one wants to get a driving licence, he will almost never get it until he pays some extra fee. These are some examples in our everyday life, showing obviously that the birocracy in our country needs radical change.

Wise people say: “Keep everything simple.” This means that we must not make simple things complicated. They also say: “Put everything simple.” This means that we have to make something complicated become more simple.” Unfortunately, the fact is contrary to the wise words. The officers in our country always tend to make everything difficult dan complicated, even if it is actually easy and simple.

Some Bad Habits of Indonesians

As we know, the majority of Indonesian people are muslims. Those who know the teachings of Islam know well that this religion commands the people to follow ‘the divine road’ that is full of good values. Being honest and responsible, having good work attitude, keeping the environment clean, and having healthy lifestyle are some of the values.

Unfortunately, we all see that in fact, muslims in this country can not implement the values in their real life. Some of them can, but many of them can not. Here I will give some examples of this terrible fact.

Smoking in public places: Many people in this country are used to smoking in buses, cabs, parks, and even offices. They do that without any feeling of being guilty. Don’t they realize that what they do doesn’t harm only theirselves, but also others? The others even face more danger than the smokers. Experts always say that passive smoking is much more dangerous than active one. Realizing this, the people are supposed to not smoke in public places.

Moreover, if we take a look at prosperity of the people in this country, we will find that most of the people are considered in poverty. In such condition, it doesn’t make sense that many people are used to smoking in their everyday life. Rather than spending money to buy some cigarettes, it is far better to spend it to get all basic needs such as food, clothes, houses,  education, job, and so on.

English Lesson: Fault, Mistake, Error, or Blunder?

Use fault when explaining who is responsible for something bad.
It’s my fault that the car was stolen. I left the window open.
It’s my mistake the car was stolen. I left the window open.
Use mistake or error for talking about something that you did or thought which was wrong. Error is slightly more formal than mistake.
We lost a week’s work due to a computer error.
I still make lots of mistakes in my essays.
I still make lots of faults in my essays.

And here are some words related to fault, mistake, error, and blunder. This is taken from Cambridge Dictionary.

blunder (noun)
a big mistake, usually caused by lack of care or thought:
Examples:
He said that the tax was a major political blunder.
I made a bit of a blunder by getting his name wrong.

bug (COMPUTER) (noun)
a mistake or problem in a computer program:
Example:
A bug caused the company’s computer system to crash.

English Lesson: Travel, Journey, or Trip?

The noun travel is a general word which means the activity of travelling.
Example: Air travel has become much cheaper.
Use journey to talk about when you travel from one place to another.
Examples: He fell asleep during the train journey.
Did you have a good journey? Did you have a good travel?
A trip is a journey in which you visit a place for a short time and come back again.
Examples: a business trip, a 3-day trip to Spain

And these are some words related to travel, journey, and trip. This is taken from Cambridge Dictionary.

adventure (noun)
an unusual, exciting and possibly dangerous activity such as a journey or experience, or the excitement produced by such an activity:
Examples:
She had some exciting adventures in Egypt.
We got lost on the Metro – it was quite an adventure.
Sam won’t come – he’s got no sense of adventure (= he does not enjoy dangerous or exciting situations).

How to Improve Your English

English is now considered the most important language around the world. There are some reasons for that. English is used as mother tongue in many big countries such as United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. It is also used as the most important second language in some countries, such as Netherlands. Furthermore, most of references in many disciplines of sciences and technology are available in English. Hence, if we want to learn those disciplines well, we have to master English.

Similar to any other language, English has some aspects to learn. To be precise, they are four: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Reading and writing are parts of written English, whereas listening and speaking are parts of spoken English. Basically, if you want to master the four aspects mentioned, you have to be good in grammar and vocabularies. Perhaps you need much shorter time to master grammar. However, you need much longer time to master vocabularies. You even need to learn vocabularies all time in your life, because vocabularies always expand from time to time.

Say No to Premarital Sex (PMS)!

Talking about youngster’s lifestyle, I’m surprised that these days many of them have a terribly bad, ridiculous lifestyle. I have interviewed many girls from different countries such as united states, canada, european countries, and south america countries. I asked them whether they have sex before marriage, or usually called premarital sex. Oh my god, most of them said yes. They said that having sex before marriage is okay. There is no problem to do that. Furthermore, many of them don’t only have sex with one guy. They even experience sex with more than one guy. What a crazy thing!

I just wonder how the girls don’t realize that they are actually the victims. Eventhough they really enjoy having sex with their boyfriends, they should realize that premarital sex is always not good for them. When a guy asks a girl to go to bed with him before marriage, it means that he doesn’t really love her. In such condition, he actually only wants sex. He only wants to get her sweetness. He only wants to taste her sexy body. He only wants to enjoy her hot body. Not more than that. In fact, most of those guys just leave her after he have had sex with her many times. They just leave her after they feel bored of her. The condition will be worse if the girl gets pregnant and then bears a baby. Those guys just leave her and her baby. They don’t want to be responsible at all.