Drawing a Picture of United States

 *disclaimer:

This post was my assignment in my English class. It was written just in time as I never had enough time for proper preparation. But one day, an email came. My lecturer was sent a review of my paper and had it graded too. Overall, it was beyond my expectation. She also came to me while I was having a casual conversation out of the class, and said: hi, did you read my email? I like your writing and blablabla--I just can't hear other words since then, haha! But still, I hope you bear with my broken English which you may find a lot of grammatical errors. Oh well, here you go, a short, unimportant, random post. Enjoy.

I never been to the United States—yet. The most vivid picture of the US was I saw on a movie 13 Going On 30. It’s a movie about a teenage girl who lives her dream becoming a chief editor of a famous magazine in New York. It is an American Dream, isn’t it?

Big city offers two contrary things: being succeed or die trying. US—just like another big city—has beautifully captured as never sleep city, big apple, glamorous, cosmopolite, etc. I never know another side of US. If any, it’s not much to compare.

The beautiful picture of US resemble of many people’s dream—I guess. Live a life with a prestigious job, become wealthy, having a metropolitan daily life, and so. Moreover, if we only absorb only the good information about US from movies, music video clips, Hollywood reportage, etc.

Being too far away from US obviously make me “blind” about that big city. Especially when I live in a third world country who usually stunned by the glimpse of New York—well, who doesn’t? And naturally, just like some others, I compare US with our own capital city: Jakarta.

In my own opinion, it’s not worth to compare. Jakarta is way too lousy. Even recently we can find better things in Jakarta, it can’t represent any of US side. But sure I believe, US also has slum area, beggars, thieves and bad bureaucracy.

So, does US have a bad side? How bad is bad? And why should I compare about US?

Well, simply because I haven’t there yet and I didn’t find any balance information about it. The only way I could do is search for any fair information so that I can have some clear output of US. I should get the other side of US so I can learn much about it. Because learning about another culture is exciting. Moreover, it is a culture from a society which considered as a modern and superpower country.

All this time I learn a bit about remote or indigenous society. I rarely dig about modern society especially US. Because, maybe, I was taken the information for granted. I have one or two friends of mine who had been going to several countries in Europe and US. But we never really talked about US life. I have a friend who lived in New Zealand for several years. She just talked about the goodness of NZ—and how terrible our country was. And I don’t think it is fair.

This life likewise, has two sides: good and bad. We can avoid mistakes from the bad and see the good so that we can learn from it. I want to explore US culture so I will see things differently. Maybe I can adapt the hard work ethic from the US people to achieve my dreams. Or maybe I can show some tolerance so that some people around me could diminish roughness and start gives equality to everybody.

Or just a knowledge someday I need before I go to US. Who knows.[]