I I-S L-E-A-R-N I-N-D-O-N-E-S-I-A L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E

So here I am in Indonesia learning a language I thought I would only ever use when rubbing defeats in other people's faces when we beat them at soccer in primary school. Just six months back I would never have imagined that I would be in this country for more than a week and in a place other than a beach resort having lots of alcohol, sex, sunshine and seafood (seems like lots of good things in life start with 'S' - such as "Suzuki GSX-R1000"). Anyway, I'm in Indonesia. At the moment, being eaten alive by mosquitos while I sit in the lobby of my hostel writing this because they don't have internet connections in the rooms.

After a week of lessons, I'm starting to realise that there's a trick to bahasa Indonesia grammar. First, you think about what you want to say in English, then, you think of how NOT to say it in English and you get the bahasa Indonesia version. Like "what colour is the car?"becomes "car colour what?" Piece of cake. And then the second rule of thumb is that you gotta imagine that you're talking like a caveman. Like in bahasa Indonesia, "me Tarzan, you Jane" makes perfect grammatical sense because they don't have uh.. what're they called? connecting words? Attributes? like "am"or "are", etc... in bahasa Indonesia.

Easy? My lan jiao ah easy. Everyday my brain does somersaults trying to arrange sentences wrongly in English and then translate the words into bahasa Indonesia. But I think I'm getting there.