#EF5: The Life After BEC

A mom is busy in the kitchen, cooking for lunch. While frying some chicken, she was checking some messages on her phone. Scroll..scroll , her fingers were moving up and down on the phone screen. Her face looked so serious, until she heard her husband shouted at her.

"Are you frying something?”

Suddenly she turned around and found her chicken was almost overcooked! She quickly turned off the stove and exhaled a sigh of relief.

That is me everyone..! 

Joining Blog English Club (BEC) has changed my life. The attachment to my cell phone like the story above is one of the examples. I wasn’t that often checking on my BlackBerry since I got not too many messages. After joining BEC’s about a month ago, I began to stand by my phone especially on Mondays and Wednesdays, where learning sessions are conducted.

What I like about this session is that I feel like becoming a student again LOL. After years of teaching and not being taught, learning under the mentorship of some experienced members has refreshed my memory. I always get new things from this learning group, whether that’s grammar theory or idioms. I also enjoy the different teaching (or sharing, claimed the mentors) style of each mentors. They “wow” me with their ability in explaining something clearly, correcting mistakes, giving easy-to-understand examples, and responding really quickly!

I, myself, can follow the discussions which are mostly in English, but I’m not sure other members who are still beginners. We have almost 100 members in Whatssap group but there are only around 30 who actively participate. I hope it happens because they are busy, not because they don’t understand and are too afraid to ask. As a solution (if the last was what happened), the admins may make another session for beginner that is conducted in Bahasa.

Okay. It is 2.20 a.m already and I still have a lot to share.

That happens almost every Thursday night now. If Indonesian belief associates the night before Friday with mystical spooky things, and Islam says it’s the best night to recite Quran, then I think it’s time to meet the deadline (thanks to BEC). Since the inspiration to write the English Friday challenge often comes 3-4 days after the announcement, I make up my mind on what to write on Thursday. What a last minute person haha.. 

It reminds me of doing papers when I was still in the university, including the midnight snacking session :p 

Other than gadget attachment and Thursday night schedule, the difference that BEC has in my life is blogger friends. Yup, these Mas and Mbak suddenly came out of nowhere, and in weeks we become like old friends. I started to remember that A likes taking pictures, B likes cooking, C is looking for his significant other, and most of us really likes reading :D

This is something that I never thought would happen since all chat groups I have are based on schools or family ties. It is unique also. The members come from different backgrounds and age range, which I seldom meet in my circle of friends. From a group chat, I tried to visit their blogs and it opens my point of view about a lot of things and it gives me a new spirit to blog seriously.

Few days ago, I tried to change my blog theme. Before, my blog was hardly visited by anyone. After joining BEC, the number of visitors is increasing, so I think I’d like to make a more reader friendly blog theme. After Googling some sites, bismillah, I followed the tutorial and taraaaa….my header became full of html codes!! *feeling stupid*

Thank God i managed to set it back to the previous theme, although now I am still thinking about how to change my background. This old cute colorful templates stay still, whatever backgrounds and themes I tried to put in. That’s okay for now. Later I’ll figure out how to fix it.

So, that’s all I have to say about what is BEC to me. I really appreciate the founders’ effort to make all of this happen. I do hope this all worth it and someday BEC will give a greater impact in blogging society, through online and offline activities.