Six years ago this week, for the Chinese New Year celebrations in 2009, we went to the city of Tegal and toured the sights in the local area. Located about halfway between the port cities of Cirebon and Semarang on the North Coast of the island of Java, Tegal is known far more as a…
Go to TBI’s website, and you will find a ”Jobs” section there. Click it on and you will go through to a screen which has four different job positions featured: TBI staff, School Manager, Non-Native Teacher and Native Speaker Teacher. The picture for the Native Speaker one is revealing in several ways, which we discuss…
In recent weeks every single forum that deals with expatriate life in Indonesia has prominently featured the news that the Manpower Department (newly split off from the Transmigration Department by the Jokowi administration) intends to bring in a Bahasa Indonesia fluency test for expatriates applying for a work visa (KITAS) for Indonesia. According to the…
One of the hallmarks of the Rumah Bahasa scandal was the issue of ”uang muka”, an Indonesian phrase which translates loosely as ”an up-front payment”. One of our main informants, a woman called Dita, has stressed that most of the victims of Frendy Horas, the owner of the now-bankrupt, language-school chain, were conned into paying…
Barusan saya dari plaza bintaro di tawarin kursus Language and beyond dengan biaya 18jt + admin ini itu sekitar 7 juta rupiah. Tapi berhubung mereka sedang promo maka dikasih discount gede jadi cukup bayar 12 jt saja selama 1tahun. Apakah ini sama dengan Rumah Bahasa ya? Karna alamatnya sama di Lotte Mart juga ya? This comment…
Surely every TEFL teacher in Indonesia will have heard by now: Manpower, the Ministry of Labor, have announced that by February 2015 they will be testing all applicants for Indonesian work visas in terms of their Bahasa Indonesian fluency. To get a KITAS, a work visa, you will first have to demonstrate ”mastery of Indonesian” in a…
A new regulation which bans beers and pre-mixed drinks from being sold in the country’s ubiquitous minimarts will be enforced from mid-April. The government will ban the sale of beverages with an alcohol content up to 5 percent level, including beers and pre-mixed drinks, in mini-markets, such as Indomaret, Alfamart, Circle K and 7-11. The…
As we have long shown, TBI is one of the most unprofessional, dishonest and unethical schools in Indonesia and beyond. The discrepancy between the puffed-up self-promotion of TBI managers on their LinkedIn pages and this troublesome little placed called reality is a yawning chasm which is large enough to swallow several ocean-liners whole. Delusional to…
The Indonesian government has created a lot of waves in recent days with their tough talk against foreigners on a number of fronts. There has been the hard-headed insistence that Indonesia needs to go ahead with executing drug mules from all over the globe as part of its ill-conceived ‘war on drugs’; there has been…
We have received information that the final branch of Rumah Bahasa- the one at Lottemart Kelapa Gading– has now been sealed. Yes, that’s right, sealed. We have been warning people about this treacherous business for a long time, so no one should be taken completely surprised. Furthermore, all four of their other branches had closed…
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