final assignment: The Old Me

The soft breeze softly touched my skin. Ugh… don’t grimace at me like that! Don’t you know that even a tree like me has skin too? Oh, you skipped the biology classes again, didn’t you? Ok, maybe it didn’t look like skin, too ragged, hey, I was old! I realized that yesterday, when I found that I was bigger than most trees surrounding me, and taller. You know how to measure a tree’s age right? With the rings in its log, no? you definitely has to repeat your biology class.
I had seen many things in my long life. What do you want to know? Blue-blooded family scandals? A duke with his mistresses? The beautiful rich girl who met her lover on my root? Or when people crazy about Elvis? The Beatles? And now what you called it? Red Hot Chili Peppers? That’s a ridiculous name, you know. Hearing all their songs made me dizzy, and that, made my leaves fell fast. I really prefer when people had picnic around me, within my shadow, listening to Beethoven, Batch, or something like that. The children ran around me, trying to climb up my branches while their parents discussing about the family future. Oh, how I wished to see those moments again.
I had seen the World War I in 1914 until 1918, the government frantically learned to mobilize and control the industrial societies. That was when this climate condition began. The global warming issue began in 1930s. People were afraid of the ice ages that were threatening to come. The ice in the Antarctic began to melt, they said.
Frankly enough, now, almost eight decades after that, the ice ages have never come. They said not yet anyway. But with approximately 1,6 billion people live in this earth, I know someday it will come. In my height, it is more difficult to breath from time to time. Oh no! you are questioning me again whether I breath, aren’t you? Of course I do, like every living creature in this world, I do need oxygen.
From my aging body, I could see the sun shines every morning on the east horizon. The green emerald had disappeared anyway. Now the shine fell to the dry ground, to the sky scrapers, trough the smoke of industrial waste.
With this old earth, I’m waiting for my own time to come. To when the termite has filled me to the bone. And I fell down with all of the glory I had known.

narrative text
pratama lysa H.
2201408107

Fajar Setio Nugroho (2201405505) - Narrative Text

The Legend of Tangkuban Perahu

A long time ago, the ancient land of Sunda was ruled by a king and a queen who had but a single daughter. Her name was Dayang Sumbi. She was beautiful and clever but also pampered and spoiled.

One day as she was weaving in her pavilion, she became moody and distracted, which caused her to keep dropping her shuttle on the floor. Once when it fell she exclaimed she would marry the one who gave it back to her. At that very moment her dog Tumang, a demigod possessing magic powers, came up to her with the shuttle in his mouth. Dayang Sumbi had to marry him.

They lived happily together, and Dayang Sumbi gave birth to a baby boy, human in appearance but endowed with his father's magic powers. She named him Sangkuriang. As the boy grew up, he was always guarded by the faithful dog Tumang, whom he knew only as a companion and not as his father, Sangkuriang became handsome and brave.

One day his mother asked him to go hunting with the dog and bring her venison for a feast. After hunting all day without success, Sangkuriang worried about facing his mother empty-handed. Desperate, he took an arrow and shot the dog. He returned home and handed over the meat to his pleased mother.

Soon after the feast, however, Dayang Sumbi questioned her son about the absence of Tumang. At first he evaded her queries but finally told her what had happened. She was horrified and struck her son so hard on the temple that he collapsed. For that, the old king banished his daughter from the court and she was made to roam around the kingdom. Sangkuriang recovered with a large scar on his temple, and he too left the court to wander about the world.

Years later, Sangkuriang met a beautiful woman and instantly fell in love with her. It was his own mother-they did not recognize each other. He proposed to her and she agreed to marry him. On the day before the wedding, as she was caressing her fiancee's hair, Dayang Sumbi detected the scar on the temple. Horror struck her, for she was about to marry her own son, Sangkuriang. Without revealing the whole truth to him, she tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him. Desperate to avoid the marriage, she set conditions she thought impossible to meet: Sangkuriang had to make a lake that filled the whole valley and build a boat for the couple to sail in, all before dawn.

Sangkuriang started to work. His love gave him extraordinary strength, and he used his magic powers to summon the spirits to help him. With boulders and mud they dammed the river in the valley and the water rose and began to form a lake. In the early morning hours he chopped down a huge tree in the forest and began hollowing it out to make a boat. When Dayang Sumbi saw that he was about to accomplish what she had thought impossible, she called on the gods to bring the sun up early and thwart Sangkuriang.

The cock crowed, the sun rose much earlier than usual, and Sangkuriang realized he had been deceived. In a fit of fury he cursed Dayang Sumbi and kicked the half-finished boat back into the forest. There it lies upside down today, forming the mountain Tangkuban Perahu (Upturned Boat). Not far away is the stump of the tree Sangkuriang had felled, now called Bukit Tunggul. The dam Sangkuriang had built caused the valley to become a lake, where both Sangkuriang and Dayang Sumbi drowned themselves. They were never heard of again.

A Farmer and A Hedgehog Statue

A long time ago, in the remote area of West Kalimantan, lived a farmer named Kuliang and his wife named Kaluang. They were kind and gentle even though they were poor.

One day, when the sun shone very bright, Kuliang was working on his field. He was resting when he saw a sparkle under the shadow of a tree. he came toward it and found a statue of hedgehog with its diamond eyes which were shining brightly. The farmer felt that the statue was beautiful and wanted to keep it. Tehn, he brought it home and planned to sell it for they was very poor.

When the night fell and the farmer family were slept, Kuliang was dreaming. In that dream he was come by a giant hedgehog. It said, "Please let me stay in your home. As a return, I will give everything you want. Just caress the statue's head and say the prayer. There are two prayers, one is to start and the second is to stop your wish."

The next morning, the farmer told his wife about his dream and they wanted to prove it.firstly, they wished for rice. After the farmer caress the statue's head and spelled the player to start, the rice flowed from the statue's mouth. The rice came and came flowing until Kuliang said the prayer to stop his wish. Secondly, he wished for jewelry and the farmer family became very rich. They shared the jewels with their neighbors but there was one who was very jealous with the farmer.

When the night came, the jealous neighbor stole the statue and ran away. In his running, he became thirsty and wished for water to the statue. Sudenly, there was water running out from the statue. He was happy and drank it but he didn't know the prayer to stop it.

He was very scared and began shouting for help. The people who saw him also scared because the water began creating a pond and being larger and larger. Slowly, it became a river and people called it as Hedgehog River.


Yunita NAsti Ansatasia
2201408128