Snacks Time

What is the first thing come to your mine when somebody says “snacks”? It can be candies, or cookies. There are so many kinds of snacks such as ice cream, chocolate, soda, doughnut, and many more. For me, snacks are really helpful. It helps me relieve my stress. I will always bring some snacks during my study in home. It truly avoids the boredom that usually comes when you study.

            Snacks are easy to find. Especially in Indonesia, you can easily find it in the street side. Or usually, people buy them in supermarket or minimarket. You can find them easier in supermarket since in supermarket there are more various kinds of snacks. Sometime in my spare time, if I do not have anything else to do, I prefer to make my own snacks. I often make it together with my little sister. One of snacks I usually make is Cheesy Spice Cookies.

            To make Cheesy Spice Cookies is easy. First of all, like every people do, we have to prepare the ingredients. The things you need to make these cookies are 200 g plain flour, 30 g corn flour, 30 g milk powder, 1 teaspoon mixed spices, and ½ teaspoon baking powder. That is for the foundation. Then we still need 50 g corn flakes which is finely crushed, 50 g grated cheese, 200 g butter, 50 g caster sugar, 2 egg yolks, 1 egg yolk for glazing, and finally some sliced almonds.

            After you have all the ingredients, you can start to work on it. So, how to make it? It is simple. Firstly, sift together the ingredients for the foundation that I have mentioned above, then stir in the corn flakes and grated cheese. You have to mix it well then you set it aside for a moment while we go to the next step. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. After that, add the egg yolks and beat them well. Next, fold in flour mixture and mix it well until soft dough forms.

            After soft dough formed, roll it into about 1 cm thick and cut with desired cookie cutter. Then place them on lightly greased baking trays and do not forget to allow room for the cookies to spread. And glaze with beaten egg yolk and decorate with sliced almonds. For sliced almonds, you can change it with other things you prefer. If you finish, bake the cookies in preheated oven at 180^o C for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then remove it from oven and let it stand for 20 minutes. Now the Cheesy Spice Cookies are ready to be served. It is easy, isn’t it?

Floods Back to Haunt

Floods come back again. That word is echoing inside our head recently. It is so pathetic considering floods always come every year and seems to be a usual thing. Floods sound like a trivial thing to some people, whereas their effects are so dangerous if it continues all the time. Government has made a lot of ways to prevent floods, but it is not easy as turning your hand. The proof of this, we can find many indifferent people who ignore the environment whereas they are involved in preventing floods.

            It is called flood, when a big number of water stagnates an area. It can be caused by many things. Nature can be one of them, and so do indiscriminate human activities. Natural phenomena such as high rainfall will influence the condition. Heavy rain which comes every day plus a pile of garbage will make water in the drains stacked while the water in river is getting overflow. Besides, we often throw garbage everywhere. Whereas, if today each of us can stand not to throw any garbage, there will be no thousand of trash in the street.

            On the other hand, the construction of houses in river side, and illegal logging leave only a little space for tree to grow. This is a big problem because if there are not enough places for trees, so water infiltration is getting hard to find. And the area which is lack of water infiltration will be easier to be flooded. Of course we cannot just stay and do nothing for our environment.

            Being careful does not mean we do nothing. When floods are about to come, we should have made many preparation. Start from food, clothes, medicine, or else. We do not need to be panic to face the floods.

            In summary, flood can be caused by nature or human. But it can be prevented if we make a lot of preparation and keep preserving the environment. Sense of awareness and sense of belonging are the main things to keep in mind. It will help us to prevent the floods which come back to haunt.

Finding Solution for Energy Crisis

Nowadays, our world is facing many serious problems, especially environmental problems. One of the environmental problems is energy crisis. Energy crisis happens in a condition when people depend on fossil fuel as their energy source. Fossil fuel is decreasing but the price of it is increasing. Energy crisis becomes everybody’s attention in this entire world because all of them feel the suffering. Indonesia experiences this pathetic condition.

            Indonesia used to be a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but ironically, Indonesia is becoming a net crude-oil importer after the domestic production fell sharply. That is the reason why Indonesia left OPEC a few years ago. Karishma Vaswani, BBC’s Asia Business Correspondent said, “It may be necessary to leave OPEC because of the economic and political conditions the country is facing right now.” As the citizen of Indonesia, it can be concluded that energy crisis is attacking Indonesia. Indonesia usually uses gasoline and coal as its energy sources. Many years ago, Indonesian people stay calm that they will not be lack of fossil fuel, but if we take a good look to the reality, we will find that the fossil fuel is decreasing now. This situation must be solved as soon as possible.

            The dependency on fossil fuel should be stopped since we have realized that energy crisis makes us hard to get cheaper gasoline, oil, or coal. People cannot ignore this situation. Gasoline and coal are energies that cannot be renewed. Can you imagine how the situation is going if the world goes without them?

            Since we are modern human, we must think fast and react automatically in facing any problems. If there are such nonrenewable energies, there must be the renewable energies. Wind, water, sunlight, and many more are renewable energies. We have them around us. Now, the thing is how we can make them beneficial for us.

            Wind, for example, is used by the fishermen for sailing. Fishermen in Indonesia usually use boats with sails. In this case, they do not need any gasoline to make their boats move.

            That was only an example of avoiding energy crisis. It will be better for us to start use the right thing that not gave us the bad impact.

Developing English Skills to Compete in Worldwide Challenges

I will tell you a story about my organization, UKM Bahasa-FLAT (Foreign Languages Association). We were once invited by State Islamic University Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung to join the event they made. They wanted us to be the participants in a competition they have held in order to celebrate eleventh SAEED (Student Association of English Education Department) anniversary. The name of the event was 1^st Annual SAEED National Competition (ASNC), and the theme was Developing Peoples English Capability to Compete in Worldwide Challenges. The competitions they held were divided into some kinds of competitions. They were Writing Competition, News Reading Contest, Speech Contest, and English Debate Competition.

            FLAT, cooperate with some students from Faculty of Dirasat Islamiya, went there as a representative from State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Faculty of Dirasat Islamiya sent one team for the English Debate Competition. FLAT sent 2 people for Writing Competition, 4 people for News Reading Contest, 2 people for Speech Contest, and 1 team for English Debate Competition.

Firstly, FLAT sent Nesya and one of my senior for Writing Competition. But then, my senior was hard to contact so suddenly, when only a day left before the competition, FLAT decided to send me instead of my senior to be the participant. Thinking that I did not even know what topics to write, I directly refused it. I have no preparation at all. I really did not have any idea. But Ka Aqin, chief of FLAT that time, encouraged me. He told me to do it. It does not matter whether I won or not. For me, I would get new experiences. So, I said yes.

Then we went there, to Bandung, on Sunday. And my turn would come on Monday which means tomorrow. I have just a very short time to prepare myself to face it. I made my outline for each topic on the way there, in the car. Can you imagine that?

Well, it came. I was sitting in the room, write anything came to my mind on the paper. All representatives from my college came to support me and Nesya. We were the star of the day. I chose Social Culture as my writing theme that day. I cannot remember what I have written that time, but I think it was not that bad for me as beginner.

News Reading Contest was held the next day, Speech Contest was on Wednesday, and English Debate Competition was on Tuesday and Friday. The result was great, I think. Such a big satisfaction we got. Even though I and Nesya did not succeed to be the winner, but from about 20 participants on Writing Competition we were in the 6^th and the 8^th place. Meanwhile, we got the 1^st place for News Reading Contest, the 3^rd place for Speech Contest, and the team from Faculty of Dirasat Islamiya got the 3^rd place for English Debate Competition. What a very valuable experience I have ever got.