What a Practice of IELTS Writing! (1)

The graph and table show us datas about using water in the world as well as the comparison of consuming it among Brazil and Republic Democratic of Congo. The graph informs us about water consumption in the world for 100 years, while the table gives information about figures of consuming water in year 2000 among the two countries.

The graph tells that there are three kind of water consumption in the world, which are for agriculture, industrial use, and domestic use. Agriculture owns the highest numbers among the three groups. In 1900, this group reaches around 500 km3 while others still obtain zero figure. It is decreasing until the year 2000, which gains up to 3000 km3. It is followed by water for industrial use which gets proportion up to 100 km3 as well as water of domestic use that just notes about 300 km3 of consumption in 2000.

There are two countries which notice their contribution in the increasing of water consumption in 2000: Brazil and Republic Democratic of Congo. Brazil which has 176 million societies and vast of area about 26.500 km2 use water up to 359 km3 in the year. Meanwhile, Congo within just 5.2 million people and 100 km2 in large of area consumes around 8 m3 in the same year. 

What Do You Think About Dry Season?

What happened in Indonesia? There are many fired cases, not only forests but also cities. Why could it happen?
Mass medias say it happened because of dry season in Indonesia. Indonesia gets so dry weather every day. If there was rain, it average happened just once in three months. 

People say that they have difficulties in their life because of dry season. They're a little bit complaining.

Let say forrest fires in Sumatra Island and Kalimantan Island. Smoke from one of the fire locations have spread to other regions. One of them is smoke from Pekanbaru, Riau. The smoke have spread to Aceh Province , North Sumatra Province and West Sumatra Province , also Riau Islands Province, either do the smoke from Jambi.

Why do people worry? The smoke from the fire result a disease of breathing pipe or lung disease. Hence, society should wear masker on order to protect their breathing. People also worry about reducing distance of sight because of the smoke. It can cause traffic accidents.

In Jakarta, there are many fire cases which came from short-electric current. It came from houses or buildings. One of them is PLN office (A national company which advances electricity in Indonesia). As result, some houses at Jakarta have to get extinction of electricity. This conditon makes more difficulties for society. Many activities have to stop for a while.

source: dreamstime

Then, what should we do for dry season? Should we blame it? I think it is not worth thing to do. However, we should realize that dry season is also the mercy from Allah SWT the God Almighty. We should have mind that those all are useful for humanlife. There's no useless from The God if we can make it work in true ways effectively.

Remembering when the days were rainy season. People complained that they got difficulties to do anything. They had to fight in big rainy day, even in the flooding day.

Ya, the only one that we can blame is ourself. We cannot make them (nature) useful. We are not able making a plan about how to change the 'bad stuff' into advantages. We enjoy the duty too much so that we couldn't pay much attention to what will happen. Whereas, The God instructs us to think more and well, but we just follow our negative appetence. 

For today, what should we do when all that stuff happened? I think we should muse and remember The God. Because, one reason why it happened is our forget to The God. It is systematic. When we forget The Creator, we might forget how He also gives us the rule and direction to use what He created.

Now, we should pray more and more to The God. At least, we pray for asking much rain in order to flush the smoke in everywhere. In Islam, there is Praying for Rain, it worked in many cases. After we do that, we should always give thank so much to The God for the dry season. We cannot reject His gift for us. We just have to say thanks.

What do you know about Minangkabau? (2)

Let me continue my writing about Minangkabau. It is the second writing. (For the first one, please visit What do you know about Minangkabau? )In this session, I'll discuss about how Minangkabau's society lived. It won't be discussed exactly for every body. I'll talk generally.

Like other ethnics in Indonesia, Minangkabau is also unique. It has owned typical stuff. Minangkabau people are known by others in their habit of going abroad. As result, there must be Minangkabau people all around of Indonesia. What do they do? Public also know them by their habit of trading.

People know Minangkabau because of many restaurant in Indonesia which menyajikan Minangkabau typical food such as rendang, ayam balado, dendeng batokok, etc. You must know that rendang is one of international food.

What makes Minangkabau people wanna go abroad around Indonesia even around the world? It comes from their characteristic which cannot give up to what condition they deal with. Whatever problems they get, there is embarrassment to sigh. They always want to solve the problems by their ability even they have to go to other place.

Taken  from Google

Hence, they should own certain abilities in their life which have to gotten since they were teenagers. In Minangkabau folklore, there are three abilities that people should own before facing a lot of challenges. What are they? They are sewing, cooking and self-defending by Minangkabau traditional martial art. It will be their provisions to be strong in life with no sigh.

You can see that story in Merantau film which is starred by Iko Uwais who also starred The Raid 1 and 2. Iko Uwais as the main actor showed that young boy from Minangkabau always wanna go abroad from his hometown to get better life. However, getting better he has to be prepared well. At least, he owned one of the three abilites, he owned self-defending ability. Rightly, the ability was useful for him to get better life and to learn more about how to get the best one.

 Some friends asked me why Minangkabau people are generally able to do trading. I answered that I don't know exactly. In my opinion, trading is just a derivative from well speaking way. I mean, Minangkabau culture gives lessons to people in speaking way. Speaking way is one of the ways of communication to other people.

For your information, there are four ways of communication in Minangkabau culture. There are kato mandaki (go-up words), kato manurun (go-down words), kato mandata (go-flat words) and kato malereang (go-slope words). Kato mandaki is used in communicating to older like parents, kato manurun is used in communicating to younger like parents to child or older brother to younger, kato mandata is used in communicating to the same age guys, and kato malereang is used in communicating to certain special persons in Minangkabau who is respected.

That ways teach Minangkabau people to speak carefully. It must not randomly in order to make people respect. In my humble opinion, these stuff make people able to speak well to another person. It stimulates the ability to persuade other persons about something, includes offering a product. That also influenced predecessors who fighted in Indonesia. Let see, some of them are Tan Malaka, Mohammad Hatta, Agus Salim, Buya Hamka, etc. They lead people's mind to get freedom and to move in some great ways.

This is the sequel of the previous discourse. There will be so many more I can discuss to you all. Be waiting, and thanks for reading.

What Do You Know About Minangkabau?

I'm from West Sumatera, a province in Indonesia. West Sumatera has some ethnics, but the most dominant is Minangkabau. Have you heard about Minangkabau? What do you know about it?

I'll try to explain about MInangkabau based on what I've got from many discourse class.

WHAT is Minangkabau? It should be the first and the most imporant thing to be questioned in order to understand it comprehensively.

Definiting Minangkabau still brings different opinions to a number of expert even Minangkabau's people. Some of them say that Minangkabau terminology came from a folklore or legend story. The story told that once upon a time there is a competition of kabau (buffalo) in the land that now called West Sumatera.

The competition happened between a rich man from Java Island and local people. This moment occured because of a fighting to owning that land. Obviously, that is a gambling. However, the local people had to serve the rich man at the challenge. Thus, local people arranged some strategies to be win.

They got information that rich man would use a big buffalo at the match. The local people surprised because they didn't own a setara buffalo. Fortunately, they agreed each other that the match would be held after a certain weeks. The spare time was used by the local people to search an effective strategy.

They decided conscripting a young buffalo. It was too small for the rich man's buffalo. However, the tiny buffalo was modified by some certain methods to be strong at the match. There were iron horns on its head. The baby buffalo was also forbidden drinking milk from its mother for a week.

Well, the rich man's buffalo was female. The match was begun, a big buffalo versus a tiny-baby buffalo. They were not waiting for a long time to see how tiny buffalo attacked the big one's stomach. The tiny looked for the big's breast. Automatically, the iron horns stabbed and frazzled the big's stomach.

The local people won and it resulted a name of 'Minangkabau'. Some people argued that 'win' in Bahasa Indonesia is menang, so Minangkabau's society called menang  as minang. So that, the buffalo won was translated into minang-kabau. Yet, some others said that minang term came from the iron horn at the tiny's head. That is the meaning of Minang. There are two opinions in a story.

Another story says that Minangkabau term came from Minanga Tamwa, the capital city of a kingdom. It is Malayu Tua, a kingdom which had ever existed in Sumatera Island in the 7th century. Nevertheless, many people also asserted that the opinion is unsure. It is still like a assumption and needs some additional and deeply research.

There are many things that can be informed about Minangkabau, but in this discourse I just explain about the 'Minangkabau' word. Please subscribe this blog and wait for the next writing. I think that's it, thank you for reading.

What??

Hello, my name is Afif Permana Aztamurri. If you all open this blog and you want to greet me, just call me Afif. In this blog, I'll say anything about what I see in this world. Thus, I analyze them and try to write them in English. There's no big purpose for this blog, I just want to practice my english, every day in writing. If you read and find some mistakes in passages I write, please inform me the correct one. Thanks, before.

This is my first time talking about anything I think about. It is about 'What??', related to the title of this blog: "What?????".

'What' is a question word that includes in 5W+1H, a group of words that is used to write an article or news in mass media. 'What' is an important word to know about something never known before. This word helps people define something. Person who uses this word needs some words from another person to answer what he doesn't understand.

'What' is also a word that used in philosophying about something. Philosophy is an art of asking something. Exactly, 'what' is an important thing to make things philosophic. It means that every field of sciences in the world needs 'what' word. Hence, I use it as my new blog title. I want to explain about something that I know, as far as I know.

Next, 'What' is not only a question word in a normal convesation of two or more communication actors, but also an expression in responding some surprise things. For example, A says "Look! I'm flying now!", B responds "What?????". Sometimes people use 'What' word exaggeratly by adding '...the', even in America I hear they add some sword words. They say "WHAT THE f**k!!!".

Sometimes, people use 'What' word to express their unwilling emotion about something. For example, C says "Do you know? I am handsome!", while D responds "What? I can't hear you!!". It will hurt someone who talks in a way that another dislike.

I think those are some points of reason why I use 'What?????'. I want to try explaining and analyzing something as well as I practice expressing something weird (this is important to respect someone).

In conlude, I remind you if you ask me 'What is WHAT?', I'll answer 'WHAT is that'. You'll ask again 'What???'. I'll add my answer 'WHAT is something that you asked me, I answered you, and you asked again. It is explained in my first writing in this blog.

Thank you very much.