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• The Straight Dope on Bahasa Indonesia While this isn't a formal treatment and some parts are outdated, I found this really useful when first learning Bahasa. The section titled "The twenty questions" actually became the most valuable part of the document. Almost every single time I met a new person, I would get asked these questions.
  
• Northern Illinois University has a good number of resources including Indonesian in 7 Days and an Overview of Indonesian Grammar and Morphology. These should help you get an idea of Indonesian's use of prefixes, suffixes, and affixes.
  
• While there are a lot of Indonesian phrase books, I found Instant Indonesian to be particularly helpful in the early stages. The examples are organized in a manner that helped me rapidly generalize about the language and expand beyond just the basic phrases. Think of this as a collection of templates to start your education.
  
• While Tuttle's Concise Indonesian Dictionary is not very comprehensive, I carried it in my backpack almost every day during my first few months in Indonesia.
  
• The English to Indonesian and Indonesian to English dictionaries by Echols and Shadily are the definitive dictionaries, but they can be a bit pricey outside of Indonesia. Inside any Gramedia in Indonesia you can get each one for around 15-20$US.
  
• The best online dictionary I've found is Sederet especially now that KEBI (Kamus Besar Indonesia) seems to be down.
  
• Wikibooks also has a pretty good introduction with links to other resources
  
• Lastly the collection of books by John Wolff are a bit dry, but they are also the most in depth for really learning the details of the language.
  
  Good luck learning bahasa. It's a fun, accessible language, and knowing just a little bit will really go a long way towards bringing yourself closer to the people of Indonesia.

You're being cryptic so I can't be sure what this is about, but I'm going to be a somewhat bold and recommend a book, Lost in the Cosmos. Walker Percy, the author, calls it somewhat facetiously the "last self-help book" since it lampoons much of the work that self-help books try (and hilariously fail) to do. The essential premise is that one persistent feature of the modern world is alienation and isolation. He takes that premise and runs with it, questioning all the ways modern humans strive to cast away that persistent pressure upon our shoulders. Percy doesn't so much offer answers (how could he, as he doesn't know himself in the same way we don't know ourselves?), but he does offer some fascinating questions to chew on and ways to think that have honestly changed the way I view life.

If you're interested, the Amazon page I linked should allow you to read through the first 10 pages or so, Percy's 6-question quiz that tries to get the reader to think about why it is that we can know so much about so many things, and yet know so little about our own selves.

And what's honestly amazing is that he wrote this 30 years ago, and we know dwarf his ability to have access to information in any variety about any subject, but we still know very little about ourselves.

Now as a disclaimer, the author is Catholic, but spends very little time making any effort at pushing his particular religious inclinations on the reader. Those times when he does talk about his faith, it's easy to read it as an expression of his own journey and not sweat it. It's clear that Percy himself has a troubled relationship even with his own religion, which doesn't have all the answers for why human beings are so lost. My point is that this is not a book focused on conversion at all, and I think it could be more than useful no matter your religious affiliations.

Currently reading Lord of Flies, 1954 and Don Quixote, 1605.

I already have had interest on literature, philosophy and books in general since... since I can remember. :/ But it was Oom Pram's Buru Tetralogie that made me fall deeper in love with books and classic literature in general.

Then, when I have started living abroad to study, I have developed big interests on classic world literature (Heck I even just learned Latin to understand about the 1500 years span of human literatures and maybe to read them myself when I have the sufficient skills to do so. Afterall, one of my personal reasons to learn language is to read the literature on its original language, because nothing match the beauty and uniqueness of one language that may 'lost' in translation).

As a poor student with tight budget and little spare time, I tried to buy second-hand books and read it time to time, like during the commuting time to class, etc.

I know, my finished read-list is not that great. Since the last months I have just finished reading George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm,,also Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

My to-read-list has been reached to dozens and dozens of great titles. I try to fulfill it little by little like a small child.

I don't quite know about classic literature club or anything like that. I do realize that my interests are mostly unmainstream and heavy for my age. Thus I mostly enjoy them myself and I am quite content and happy with it. But if you want someone to discuss or talk, I can offer you a chance to geek-ly talk about that. Just drop a PM on me if you're interested and maybe we can exchange our contacts and do some 'book exchange' within each other.

P. S. Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey is also on my to-read-list. Honestly I'm quite surprised to know that there is someone who also read literature from that time.

I'm working tonight. Reddit is my entertainment. I like reading books, partciularly non-fiction. Recently I finished 2 book:

• Company Man by John Rizzo who worked as a lawyer in the CIA for 30 year plus!
  
  
• Good Hunting by Jack Devine who worked for the CIA for 30 year plus. Unlike Rizzo Devine was an operative.
  
  The interesting thing I learn from the 2 books is that the CIA at least since the 70's until recently DO NOT perform/condone political assassination. They also did not perform torture. If you read Rizzo book they HAVE to get approval from the Justice Department before performing their enhanced interrogation techniques on their prisoners. The Justice Department has to review case-by-case before they will allow the CIA to proceed. Note that Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo DO NOT belong to the CIA but to the US Army.
  
  Another thing I learn from Devine book: The CIA did not plot to overthrow Salvador Allende in Chile 1973. The CIA did not run Operation Condor (ie assassination) in Latin America in the 70's. They did received infofrmation that local Latin American inteliigence were doing assassination.
  
  Having said all of the above these 2 gentlemens are still part of the CIA family. You can never really retire from organization like that. So take whatever they said with a pinch of salt!
  
  More interesting topic from Devine's book. In the 80's the CIA was supporting the Afghan against the Soviet. They bought weapons from Egypt/China/etc then smuggled it to Afghanistan. They bought 9000 mules from China and have them driven by the rancher all the way to Afghan border! Mules are very important for logistics since Afghanistan doesn't really have roads outside big cities. The Chinese knew that the Americans bought their weapons to hurt the Soviet! So clearly China and Russia IS NOT natural allies despite what the US media tell you.
  
  Another interesting topic from Devine's book. The French Intelligence apparently had(have?) been conducting industrial espionage particularly against American aerospace industry. They spy and steal from American aerospace executive. Lesson to be learned from this: American aerospace industry still leads the world!
  
  By contrast to the French John Rizzo in his book claims that the CIA never provide any benefit to US private sectors. Despite this US private sectors are quite willing to help the CIA! One Hollywood star said to his CIA handler that he is willing to be CIA asset for free with just 1 condition: that the CIA provide the highest quality cocaine that worth 50,000 dollars. I think at the highest quality you could only get several grams of that! Rizzo rejected this because the CIA is not allowed to break the American law. Rizzo also mentioned how he went to meet a CEO of a US multinational and the guy simply said: "Look son, you don't have to tell me of all the risks. I'm a rich sumbitch and I want to help the CIA!" Lesson to be learned from all this: Americans are patriotic!
  
  

I know his background and I also know some of the allegations, cases, etc. I don't want to get embroiled in either trying to refute the allegations or researching more now...

But I just want to point you to this book; I've read it (just download it here) and it told me how the richest people in the world became rich (no, it's not a self-motivation book. Those books are worthless. The writer is an economist and a PhD holder) through various means that are less than... pure. The ways that Sandi got his riches were almost certainly not through that straight of a path. Still, I've met him personally a few times, I've talked with people close to him and one of them is my close friend, so suffice to say that I believe that he has integrity, at least in term of making Jakarta better and in the term of being a good, competent public servant.

>If you could learn any Bahasa Daerah, what would it be and why? I'm learning Kawi for the poetry.

I'm part Javanese and I went to Yogya for university, so I speak and understand some Javanese. Enough to get by. Learning proper Javanese for understanding Wayang and classical poetry would be cool, but it's too tough for me. I'd focus on my Mandarin instead.

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>What's are your favorite books, fic/non-fic on Indonesia in Indonesian/English/Spanish. I love Indonesian history, but moved to the U.S. before SMA, so everything since then has only been self study.

To start, I'd recommend Nusantara by Vlekke. It's not perfect, it's not complete, but it's a good start. Afterwards, perhaps you could read Indonesia, Etc. by Elisabeth Pisani to know modern-day Indonesia.

If you want to get historical, read The Indianised States of Southeast Asia by Coedes and A History of Java by Raffles. Those are very academic, so be warned.

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>If YOU had carte blanche to write the most interesting book ever on Indonesian history, what's the title/subject and why?

I'd write about the pre-Islamic period and the interaction between the Indonesian kingdoms with the rest of Asian countries such as China and India. I feel like nobody knows much about this crucial period. Heck, we even had Majapahit ambassadors go to Japan and Korea ffs, yet nobody knows this.

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>Can we be buddies? I'm on twitter and instagram and stuff.

Only on reddit. I want to remain anonymous.

i dunno much about this kind of thing but probably this can help from what i just read

There is a risk that one of the borrower among you choose to default. It's not may be a good option because even if that X person choose to default and your team can simply use the money from his percentage of profit to pay his percentage of interest, it may not be enough (well you are the one who know the amount of money there). as its consequence, the debt goes up due to the unpaid interest, and everybody else have to pay extra money than they should have. and also it's so much troublesome (ridiculous amount of time and money) if you guys have to go to court to get the defaulter pay the money.

There is some possible way to make sure that everybody pay, it's just a lesson from a book i just read (poor's economics) but hey, probably it can work.

Have a weekly/biweekly/monthly meet up between you guys, this is what the microfinance company use to ensure the borrower to pay the money. so basically, if someone want to borrow money from microfinance moneylender, they have to borrow it as a group. and then they have to held some weekly meet up in the company group. there they make sure each other they all can pay the debt, using some kind of peer pressure (not in bad way ofc) and some peer-support to encourage each other. it's effective (at least in microfinance case) to lower the rate of default (only 4%, it's considered as very low and it' much better than other option). It's also a good way to push other to pay without having to resort to physical/court path (just what Loan shark and bank do)

this may be troublesome, but well, it's better than default option. you guys do need some protection from default.

http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1610390938 if you're interested. the microfinance part in the book. nice reading though

Training == infer the parameters for the model, given the data. That's the learning bit basically. The idea isn't new, the stats people have been doing this for ages. It's just that in the recent two decades, computer science has somehow stumbled onto the same direction too after we realise that constructing AI by formal rules don't work well. Since you already know how to construct econometric models, you already have a headstart compared to most CS people who want to learn this stuff :P

One of the 'bible' in the field is Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, which can be quite dense for many people. I prefer this book: Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective, which is much friendlier for self-study. You can also find both books online as PDF after some searching hehe. But really the best way is doing by practice. Grab some public data and just do stuff with them. Also join this sub /r/machinelearning and /r/dataisbeautiful.

Edit: grammar

Saturn Run describes this in a great deal, also if you like reading some sci-fi thriller, I'd recommend getting it. You can easily import it from opentrolley.co.id though.

I think you're right and wrong at the same time about how difficult it is to learn Indonesian.

The American 'FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE' lists Indonesian as harder to learn than most of the major European languages: https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/

However, this is only true if you're learning formal, correct Indonesian. IMHO, it's probably the easiest language in the world to learn for practical, everyday use.

Here's the steps I took to learn practical, everyday, Indonesian.

1. Forget learning grammar. If you really do achieve fluency for practical Indonesian, you can always learn it later.
   
   
2. Listen to audio lessons in the shower everyday: https://www.learningindonesian.com/
   
   
3. Learn the most useful 100 words: https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Indonesian-express-different-Phrasebook/dp/0804833710
   
   That's it!
   
   Well . . . not really, but you need to be honest with yourself about the likelihood of remembering words and concepts you have no practical use for.
   
   The only reason I was able to retain what I learned was because I live in Indonesia and really NEED to know the language to get by.

If there's an Asian market around you there should be one! Usually the brands that might be in the shelves are either ABCs or Bango. Taste wise almost all of them (ABC, Bango and Indofood) are kinda the same, you might just need to find one that's according to your taste.

Right now, I'm on a tour of Space Opera; Ancillary Justice before sleep, Abaddon's Gate during commute, and The Sundiver on my laptop during downtime at work. Between those 3, Abaddon's gate is the most interesting one, although it requires you to read the first two books.

For a general history, A History of Indonesia since 1200 by Ricklefs is a pretty solid work, as is a History of Modern Indonesia by Vickers.

About the PKI specifically The Rise of Indonesian Communism by Ruth McVey is the classic on that topic that most other historians would cite. It's quite old, I think it was originally written in the 1960s but there hasn't really been a work that surpassed it for the overall story of the PKI.

Lazypod bagus yang bisa ngehold lebar ~7.5 cm apa ya? Browsing di toped kebanyakan holdernya paling pendek sekitar 11 cm an (aka hold hp vertikal, pengennya buat horizontal). Ini promising tapi w ga nemu.

I'm planning to buy Barakamon manga vol. 13 online (I will buy english translation) just comparise the price between english translation and Indonesia translation it look like that the english translation is way more expensive than Indonesia translation is this really true? (first time trying to buy online)...

It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!


Here is link number 1 - Previous text "Ini"



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^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete

Where do you live? I think I saw a copy in Kinokuniya bookstore in Jakarta, but I don't remember which one. Or you can buy from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/9798083830/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200: Fourth Edition by M.C. Ricklefs, Amazon Link

Here is the mobile version of your link

this? http://www.amazon.com/Supernova-Knight-Princess-Falling-Star/dp/9798083830

I've been wanting to read these three books

1. Indonesia's Forgotten War: The Hidden History of East Timor - John G. Taylor.
   
   
2. Generations of Resistance: East Timor - Peter Carey..
   
   
3. Inside the East Timor Resistance Paperback – Constancio Pinto & Matthew Jardine.

Did a mock test of TOEFL IBT for the first time in 3 months with this Official Test Book.

Got 19 out of 30 from the first listening section. Shit man maybe its time to say goodbye to my dream of studying abroad with a scholarship. I swear the mock test from Official Guide Book is a lot easier.

Anyway, where is the cheapest place to take the TOEFL IBT test in Jekardah?