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)

Hello world !!!
Welcome to my blog “Living Indonesia Cultural”. Nice to meet you through this blog, hopefully you can enjoy it and send your feedback to me if you feel there is room to improve this blog.

Talking about Indonesia Culture, honestly I talk here that I am not a professor in cultural studies. I am also not artist or art activist. I am just a common citizen of Indonesia. I am just an engineer with working in instrumentation and control system engineering, definitely separated with cultural studies.

I make a blog which specifically talk about Indonesia culture because I was born in Indonesia, a country where rich of culture. I was born in the atmosphere of culture; I was also growing in the cultural life style. During my childhood, I could perform traditional dance. I used to sing traditional song and practicing customs and traditions. Until now I am still enjoying a culture based on customs and traditions even though I work in engineering domain.

Through this blog, I would like to promote my proud of Indonesia. A country with destiny to have ultimate diversity, diversity in ethnics and sub-ethnics, languages, life-styles and traditions. A country with ultimate creativity to produce cultural products such as dances, songs, handcrafts, architectures, folklores and legends.

I am sad as the nearest nation has claimed several our traditions to be their property without permission. Off course that action is disgraceful. Therefore to make a better understanding and perception, hopefully this blog will deliver to you the right information about our culture.

OK, please enjoy it.

Warm regards from Borneo, Indonesia.

Osa Kurniawan Ilham.