Dirgahayu Republik Indonesia

After almost five years never take a chance to attend the ceremony for our independence day, finally four days ago I joined the official ceremony at "Wisma Indonesia" Washington DC, the house of Indonesia’s Ambassador to the United States of America. Our independence day is on August 17 1945, so this year we are celebrating our 67^th of anniversary. As a tradition, we always celebrate our independence day with having a flag ceremony. The name of our national flag “Sang Merah Putih” represents the color of the flag which is red and white; Red color represents the courage, while the white color represents the purity.

There are two series of ceremony at our independence day, in the morning for raising the flag, and in the evening for bringing down the flag. Back home in Indonesia, this official morning ceremony will be taken place at every government office and public school. The peak for the ceremony will be at Presidential Palace (Istana Negara) in Jakarta. The ceremony at the palace will peak at 10am to commemorate the memorable time when our founding fathers (Soekarno and Hatta) officially declared Indonesian independence 67 years ago. This moment is called “detik-detik proklamasi”. The most interesting fun times starts after the Presidential Palace ceremony, which is directly broadcast to all over the country, has ended. We continue our celebration with eat together, start from official banquet at the palace until enjoying simple tea and snacks at district offices at every corner of the country. In the same day, usually start around 4pm, we will continue our celebration with a series of community fun games such as “balap karung” (sack race), “panjat pinang” (Mounting nut races), etc. Before the D-day, usually we also have several competitions such as community dance (e.g. poco-poco, sajojo), chess, domino, and other sport competition (ping pong, badminton, volley ball etc).

Nasi Tumpeng which is colored in yellow  

In US, we do not do the community fun games, only sport games; including chess and domino. I want to join the domino competition, because I used to be very good in this game when I was a kid to teenager. But since I do not have enough time to do this; my data processing is my priority for the time being; sadly I should skip this fun opportunity.

The Kultum before Maghrib

I therefore just attended the evening ceremony. I was so touched when all of us start singing our national anthem “Indonesia Raya” (Great Indonesia). The feeling was totally different from singing the same song in similar ceremony back home. It might be the feeling of being away from the motherland. This event actually was also special because we were still within the fasting month (Ramadhan), so the evening ceremony was then followed by breaking the fasting together (buka bersama). Before Maghrib, we have a sermon called Kultum ("kuliah tujuh menit" or seven minutes lecturer), though it might be taken longer than seven minutes. The sermon was ended when the Maghrib adzan was played as a sign of the end of our fasting. By this time, our ambassador, Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, then cutting the yellow rice cone (Nasi Tumpeng) as a symbol of celebrating great event, and we ended our fasting with sweet snacks and hot beverages, before start the main course. That was an incredible experience during my life in US.