The awesome Indonesian people

It was so common in my class that my students would ask me random questions especially about Indonesian culture.

“Lina, I don’t understand your people”
“Why?”
“Look, they like to sitting and talking for hours.”
“O… we call it ‘nongkrong’ ….”
“What the meaning of nongkrong?”
“Sitting, talking and actually doing nothing”
“O my goodness. And look at them. They are so happy and do you know they probably don’t make enough money. Do you think they have a life insurance or a lot of saving in their bank account? But my maid at home she doesn’t have a bank account. The money I gave to her … easily gone”

My other student always asked me
“When some of your people really want to live in United States, why do you still like to live in this country? Your country has no future because of the corruption and they hate each other because of religion or ethnic”

It was so hard for me to explain about those issues.

I found the way to explain to them at the end. Here was my explanation

“If you want to buy diamond, there are some criteria. We call 5 Cs it is color, clarity, carat, cut, and confidence. The quality of Indonesian people has 3 Cs.

The first C is “Collective”
Western people are individualist, but Indonesian people are not. We are considered very collective. You can see Indonesian people like to hang out during lunch. They go together, they eat together, shopping together. Even they go to toilet together. So it was so common when I was a teacher at regular school, my teenager student would ask, “Miss… May I go to the toilet with my friend?” Until now you can see some teenagers post their picture together in the toilet…

For Indonesian they don’t need insurance, they will help each other. One of the group members has problem the rest will help. They will collect the money or they will try to find out the solution.

The second C is “Care”
Indonesian people care so much about their friends or family, sometimes they care to the strangers. It is very common when we have a problem, our friends are more curious and even more stress than we are. Sometimes … in the middle of nowhere, people can ask, “Are you still single? Why are you still single? You know you are so pretty and let me introduce you to someone …”
I could say, “Your stress is not coming from your own problem, but your stress comes from people who care so much about you”

The last C is “Communicator”

Indonesian people are really great Communicator. They are so attached with their smart phone. They send text all the time. And they have more than one number, more than one cellphone. When they have only one cellphone but inside the phone they carry Dual SIM Card. They set their phone glued to the hand… They prefer to forget bringing the wallet and money instead of forgetting their smart phone. Because with the smart phone if they forget to bring the money, they still can text to borrow the money from their friends.

If you deny that … you can say …”No… I don’t really care and I am not a great communicator”

Please look at your phone, how many “WhatsApp” groups you have and how many people whom you chat with.


Base on those 3Cs character living in Indonesia is good because we can always count on our friends, we never walk alone and we always connect to each other’s.

No one knows about the future but at least we still can hope that Indonesia will be great because we are “The awesome Indonesian people”



**Lina Kartasasmita** 25 September 2017 at 10.12 PM


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