Kevin travelled to Malang, Surabaya and Kediri in late February. He presented a KGRE Teacher Workshop in Kediri plus visited radio stations - RRI Malang and Bonansa FM Kediri - while in East Java. Kevin also caught up with members of Tunas Hijau in Surabaya. Kevin also met with staff from AusAID's ISELP program, including Mark Avery in Kediri, and IAPBE projects and visited the newly formed KGCC 'Australia Language Club' in Malang.
KangGURU Travels to Malang, Surabaya and Kediri
The wet season in Indonesia, especially late afternoon, is not a good time to fly. The weather is often stormy. The skies are cloudy and turbulent. Landing can be a problem due to poor visibility and wind. But nevertheless I flew to Surabaya late on Wednesday afternoon, Feb 16th. The takeoff from Denpasar was fine but over east Java the situation went downhill fast, which such a good thing when you are 7 kilometers high up in the sky. Although I am not sure I think that the reason we circled above Surabaya for 45 minutes was due to the very bad weather around the airport. Rain and ligthtning for sure. There was even lightning at our circling altitude. Finally we approached the airport for landing with thick black clouds everywhere, repeated fork lightning all around the aircraft and quite heavy rain too. It w as not a nice place to be and I was very happy when we finally landed safely at 17.45 Surabaya time – the usually 35 minute flight from Bali had taken us almost 2 hours. The taxi ride to Malang was much more pleasant. I booked into the Graha Cakra Hotel as usual. It was the old RRI building many years ago and now is a very nice ‘old world’ style hotel.
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On Friday morning I went to Batu for a meeting with participants of the AusAID funded Islamic Schools English Language Project (ISELP). It was their annual In Country Meeting (ICM) and I was there to give them the latest news on KGRE activities. I traveled to Batu from Malang with Mr. Barry Clarke, newly appointed team Leader of the Indonesia Australia Partnership for Basic Education (IAPBE) in Malang. These two very active AusAID projects deal with education and basically in East Java although a few members of the ISELP team can be found in Jakarta and Palembang. |
On Saturday Pak Wintanto from KGRE’s newest Connection picked me up at the hotel. We headed for the Malang City Library for a meeting with the Australia English Club, KGCC #009. We began at 9.00am with around 50 members of the club all fired up and rarin’ to go. Pak Witanto had organized several activities for the members to do including a terrific version of Monopoly. The board game use a lot of KGRE ‘items’ and information and it was fun to play. The members loved it. I spoke with Wintanto about the possibility of making the board game into an item of KGRE merchandise – we are working on the idea. Three club members also gave a wonderful rendition of ‘Break Away’. The members of the music group were guitar players Dim and Dimas with Farida singing. So talented! I stayed with the Australia Club for over two hours and really had a great time.
I met with Ibu Endang and Ibu Fifin, volunteers at the library, and Ibu Rosida, a teacher at SMP 1 Malang, to talk about the possibility of a KGCC link being formed with the language club based at the library itself. It appears that they have quite a large language club there with around 150 members. Let’s hope that this happens and when I return to Malang in May 2006, perhaps I can join with that club in their first KGCC activity. Let’s see what they do.
Next stop was Brawijaya University and a meeting with students from their Language and Literature Program. I was late – jam karet – but they were very patient and we ended up chatting for over 90 minutes. The Dean of the Faculty arrived during the meeting. Her name is Ibu Enda Tabiati. Is obviously very interested in her students and she and her team were very welcoming and appreciative. It was a pleasure to be there. Ibu Enda Tabiati is in fact an Australian Alumni having studied at Sydney University way back in 1982 under an Australian scholarship similar to the current Australian Development Scholarship (ADS) scheme. We hope to interview Ibu Enda in May and find out more about her studies in Australia, her career and her current position at Brawijaya University. |
Thanks also to Retno Maharani, Manager of the English Club at the university for conducting the meeting.
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On Sunday I went to RRI Malang. Their interactive English program is very successful. Although there were just 30 listeners at the meeting, they were all very keen to ask questions, discuss a wide range of topics and continue to support Tri Ristana, the enthusiastic presenter on RRI each Sunday morning at 9.00am. It was so nice to chat with the listeners and I had 'help' with me. Margaret and John Rollings from ISELP and based in Madura, went to RRI with me and they were asked their fare share of questions too. KGRE hopes to return to RRI Malang in early May for another listener meeting. In the early afternoon I went to Surabaya with Margaret and John along with Prue Price, another member of the ISELP team.
On Sunday afternoon in Surabaya I met with members from Tunas Hijau - a wonderful group of young environmentalists who are really active and enthusiastic. You can read about them in the March 2006 KGRE magazine. I met ( from far left) Happy, Andi, Narendra and Tunas Hijau leader, Roni. Marisa arrived later. Andi and Marisa have articles in the magazine in March and so we met to record their contributions. They were a bright and happy group and we spent several hours together at my hotel. |
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On Monday morning, the 20th of February, John Rollings, and two of his teachers from Madura, joined me for the trip to Kediri. They actually only went as far as Jombang where they visited Amber Earles (ISELP) and Ben Liu (AVI). Ben has been setting up an Australian Studies Centre at Pondok Pesantren Darul Ulum and John and his two friends, Bambang (teacher) and Kholis (language lab administrator) wanted to see what Ben and Nurdin at Darul Ulum were doing in their center. The center is looking pretty good and with extra funds hopefully coming soon, the center should be a really good one. That’s just what Bambang and Kholis want for their own center in Guluk Guluk, Madura soon.
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#Latest Breaking News
The Australian Studies Centre at Pondok Pesantren Darul Ulum has just been granted extra funds for their center. KGRE is very excited about that and it will be great to go back there later this year to see how they have used the money. The funds came from the Direct Assistance Program (DAP) from the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.
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I left them all there while I headed down the road to Kediri. Mark Avery, ISELP teacher trainer based at IKIP Kediri, called by my hotel later in the day and we headed out for dinner. Also at dinner was Ririen from Bonansa FM who is quite a singer. At dinner she sang a few songs with the resident and in the restaurant and she was pretty good. I found out later that she actually performed with PADI and Ari Lasso in Surabaya a few months ago. Ririen is the interactive program presenter at Bonansa FM. Members of the workshop organizing committee were also at dinner along with Mark’s wife and two children.
The Kediri workshop was a pretty interesting event with 120 teachers packed into a room at IKIP Kediri. It was just big enough for them all and even the air-conditioners had trouble coping with the enthusiasm and the excitement of the participants. Over 50 teachers ordered KGRE Teacher Packages and they all expressed a lot of excitement with the new SMP package. They were also interested in the 2006 SMA package due for release in July. It was a terrific workshop and a classic heavy Kediri downpour of rain at 2.00pm finished off the day. Thanks to Ibu Dhiany and her Organizing Committee team for all of their hard work. Well done!
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In the late afternoon Mark took me to Bonansa FM to take part in their interactive program. They invited members of their language club to attend too – the BONEFO Club. Also members of the language club at IKIP attended the pre-interactive show meeting. Drs. L. Hadi Pranoto, Director of Bonansa FM made us all feel very welcome indeed with drinks and snacks ‘laid on’.
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The members of the two clubs asked many questions about KGRE. I was quite surprised just how few of them received regular KGRE magazines – I encouraged them to write to KGRE asap and place their orders. KGRE received quite a few suggestions about how to possibly make the radio program more interesting. One idea was the idea of having a regular KGRE NEWS segment. The news couldn’t be the latest daily news of course but it could be news of the very latest trends in Australia and Indonesia, news about entertainment, culture, etc. It sounds like a good idea to me. Other suggestions included biographies of famous people, comedy dialogues and reviews of movies available on DVD and VCD in Indonesia.
Caroline Milford (AVI Jombang) and her radio associate at SURGA FM, Luluk, also arrived and joined in with the club discussion and then the interactive program as well. Bonansa FM broadcasts KGRE every Tuesday at 7.30pm and then begin the interactive program around 8.00pm. |
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Mbak Ririen and Bu Yulfa run that program and do it very well. They average 12 calls a program from listeners and they certainly attract quite a deal of callers by discussing interesting topics and generally having fun with English. Caroline, Luluk and I received quite a few calls each and it was fun speaking with people studying English in Kediri. We gave away 4 KGRE Prize Packs and in fact one of the winners, Usman, rushed straight down to the studio to pick up his prize personally from us. |
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On Wednesday morning, at 5.00am, I left Kediri for Juanda Airport Sby for the flight home to Bali.
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