Indonesia national flag is Sang Saka Merah Putih (Red and white flag). Our flag is similar with Manaco’s. Also similar with Poland’ flag but with opposite composition.

Our flag is one of good example about symbolic culture. Red and white flag has been used as flag of battle by our ancient kingdom as Sriwijaya (8 AD century) and Majapahit (13 AD century).

Our Red and White flag represents Indonesia Revolution. During Dutch occupation in the past, you will be jailed and killed if you make or show Red and White. Why ? Because it represents our spirit for independence.

Red in our flag means brave. Red represents our blood which spilled out to take away our independence. White means holy, sterile, purification. White represents our bone which be sacrificed for fighting colonialism and imperialism.

In our culture, we treat our red and white flag as a high value heritage as representing the sacrifice of our heroes and founding father during independence revolution. Therefore, don’t be under estimate for our flag.

Indonesia has good experience in the past about this condition. Surabaya, October 1945, several Dutch officers put out Dutch’s flag (Red-White-Blue) on the top of Hotel Yamato in Surabaya, capital of East Java. This situation as like provocation for Indonesian which celebrating its independence which proclaimed on 17 Aug 1945. Therefore, all Surabaya people finally crowd around the hotel to perform demonstration demanding put off Dutch’s flag. Finally one Dutch officer was killed in this incident and several young people was lowering the Dutch’s flag, tearing the blue part and then put out again the flag, now in Red and White only.

Source of photo:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/bendera%20indonesia/duniafotograpy/art%20Photograpy/ALAM/Bendera.jpg?o=1

(Osa Kurniawan Ilham, Balikpapan – Borneo)

Basic character of Indonesia people is quiet, polite and not straight to the point. It should be well understood since we are living with many ethnic groups, with different habits, language and also life style. In this situation, you should be careful if you make interaction and communication with others. Because; as example verbal communication; the words you used in your conversation may be not too dangerous in your ethnic groups, but it will be dangerous in other groups.

Therefore, symbolic cultural is growing in Indonesia. Every message is usually being delivered using symbolic language to reduce problems occurred. To know a real meaning of something you cannot directly get from the visual, but you should develop ability to understand deeply than you see or listen. It needs ability of meditation and self-possession.

Every thing is symbolic here, representing the meaning inside. White color is meaning a holy, righteous, no contamination, true. Red color means brave. Blue color means calm, faithfulness. Black means a mystery. Yellow means richness, wealth. It is just example of symbolic cultural in color usage.

Symbolic also can be found in our traditional dance. Every movement in our dance represents specific meaning; sometime its meaning is very deep and useful for our daily life. It is more transcendent than just as an art.

This situation may be difficult to be understood by western people. But, impossible is nothing. All people from whole the world can enjoy and understand our culture, even though need a bit effort.

Officially, Indonesia has 2 seasons; dry season and rain season. Dry season is usually in April until September and Rain season is in October until February. But, due to global warming our seasons now have changed, cannot well predicted as previously.

As a joke, we also have other many seasons here such as durian season, mango season, banana season, pineapple season, etc. Don’t be mixed. It is not talking about natural season, but fruit season. For you info, in our country, fruit is still farmed traditionally therefore fruit cannot be produced along a year depend on its fertilization. For instance, durian is produced during November until March. Different fruit has different periods.

Seasons is very influencing the life-style in Indonesia, including their cultural life. As info, Indonesia is agricultural country since most of citizen work as farmer. Long time ago when agriculture is performed traditionally, our people only work during rain season. During dry season, the people will be more creative to produce culture as well as dance, song, music or traditions ceremonies.

Most of Indonesia culture is affected by agricultural. You will know the legend of Dewi Sri here to express our appreciation to God who gives us rice as source of food. I will write about this later.
Since the most area of Indonesia is sea, and very affected by seasons, cultural among people which stay in beach area is also affected by sea and season. You will know the legend of Nyi Roro Kidul who believed by most of Java people as queen of India Ocean. I also will write about this in next opportunity.

Look your globe or your world map. Focus your eyes on the area between 6o north latitude and 11o south latitude, between 95o and 141o east longitude. You will see a collection of islands, an archipelago which consisting of 5 big islands such as Sumatera, Java, Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes) and Papua. It is INDONESIA.

In fact, Indonesia archipelago is not consisting of 5 islands only. There are 17,000 beauty islands which situated on the equatorial area. That why my original name is NUSANTARA; the old name which consist of NUSA (or “islands” in English) and ANTARA (or “in between” in English). We are also called as “Zamrud Khatulistiwa” (or “Equatorial Emerald” in English) due to this situation.

Indonesia is a country where located in between Asia and Australia, in between og Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. In this country living approximately 250 million people which consist of more than 200 different ethnic groups, speaking more than 300 different languages. For covering those, we proclaimed ourselves as Republic of Indonesia with Indonesia language as national language and slogan of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (or Unity in Diversity” in English) to unite all people in one proud.

May be apart of you have well known about Bali islands than Indonesia. For your info, Bali is apart of Indonesia. Bali is one of provinces in Republic Indonesia, the most famous place with Hinduism culture and interesting places and life styles.

If you want to visit our country, there are several direct flight route to Indonesia which served by our national flag carrier “GARUDA”. If you are in Japan (Tokyo or Osaka), South Korea (Seoul), China (Beijing, Ghuangzhou or Hongkong), Thailand (Bangkok), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Singapore, Middle East (Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha), Europe (Amsterdam) you can directly fly to Indonesia using this airline with destination Jakarta (our capital) or Denpasar (Bali). For further info, please visit http://www.garuda-indonesia.com/.

Other flights to Indonesia are also served by other international airlines such as Air France, Singapore Airline, Silk Air, etc. You can click its website.

(Osa Kurniawan Ilham, Balikpapan-Borneo, 17 Sept 2009)