• To fellow Indonesians abroad, fret no more! The House of Representatives has agreed to pass the new citizenship bill into law. From now on, children from international mariage will get Indonesian citizenshil until they reach 18, and then they can choose their own citizenship. Indonesian women who are married to foreign men can also sponsor their husband to obtain Indonesian citizenship.

• In the upcoming miss universe pageant, surprisingly Miss Indonesia Nadine Chandrawinata is on the top five in a recent poll held by the committee with 50,081 respondents. This is an excerpt from her video:

Q: Who is your idol?
A: My admir um…my admire is umm Mother Teresa because she’s so humble for me…

And that is not all.

Q: What do you want the rest of the world to know about your country?
A: Indonesia is a beatiful city (wtf?!), so.. you should go there to visit by yourself because we have alot of beautiful bitches (Err, I hope she meant beaches) and the spectacular mountain and dramatic of history and so the people. Because people of Indonesia is really…is really welcome umm and is really friendly because they’re like to know more about other country, other belief other ideas so…come to Indonesia, and feel it, and um…we open…um we open our arm to come to Indonesia.

She then admitted that she doesn’t speak English well. I wondered why she used English at all then–I mean she only embarassed herself by doing so. We all know contestants are allowed to speak in their mother tongue. But the Indonesian beauty then added that her Indonesian is not fluent since she speaks German in daily life. Ah well!

On the other hand, Miss Hungary Adrienn Bende cleverly avoided Nadine’s mistake by speaking in German during her interview. She definetely learned something from Miss Hungary 2005 Szandra Proksa. In case you’re curious about Miss Proksa, you can read my entry about her here or on Pestiside . They quoted me, don’t cha know?

• In another news about Hungary, the Central Statistics Office (KSH) said that farmgate prices jumped by 11.6% in May from a year earlier.

• Higher education students must pay tuition from now on, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány announced at a youth festival last weekend. The government is planning to introduce a uniform tuition fee of Ft105,000 ($481) per semester for a bachelors degree and Ft150,000 ($688) per semester for a masters, irrespective of the field of study.

• If you complained about the financial state already, don’t worry—we all know about it. “Hungary’s public finances are at the moment the most problematic in the European Union,” European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Germany’s Die Welt in an interview published on Thursday. That also means another tax rise for us, I suppose.

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