a Book Review: "Dear Venny, Dear Saffron" by Gary Crew and Libby Hathorn

Image is taken from www.brotherhoodbooks.org.au

This is a romantic novel authored by two Australians. Although simple, this book is interesting regarding the plot, the character of the figures, and also the way the authors use to present the story. Overall, I would recommend this book, especially for those who are in favor of such genre and need an easy novel to be digested.

The story begins when Venny (Venero Merlo's nickname), a 16 years old Australian boy, has to send mail to Saffron Duval, a pen friend to be, as part of English course accomplishment. Initially, he views it as a silly task but it changes as time goes by. 

Saffron, who base in New York, is an orphaned girl living with her aunt named Beatrice. She has a rollercoaster life since her parents were dead, and she thus has to follow her aunt. She does a home-schooling due to her unsuccessful school days with some jerk mates who ruin her physiologically. On the other hand, Venny coming from a well family in Australia is a cheerful person who then starts a career in modeling before a physical accident comes up and changes his life since then. It is not a coincidence that Saffron loves art painting and similarly Venny then realize his talent in sculpture.

After a long journey of becoming penpals with almost  three-year shares of ups and downs in each other's personal lives, they realize that it has been a start of a love story, although they have never met yet. At that time, Venny admits that he loves Saffron, who give a similar response. Long story short, even though separated by continents and oceans, Venny make a promise to visit Saffron one day, and he is working thereon.

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P.S. Thanks to Barbara, who recommended this novel as I used to be bored with reading activity. 

AAS45m1 Class

This one has been my second home for the last two months and will be continued until the next two months, which means we almost reached half of this course. We are fourteen people with a similarity in our major to be taken in the next study. We are under a general economics course, while I particularly plan to take master's degree in taxation, still closely related apparently. We have Simon Hotchkiss as our core teacher, Barbara Wiechecki as our cross-cultural instructor, Simone Samuels as study skill specialist,

Rina Dewanti as our library instructor and also Dedy Satriadhi as the computer-class instructor. Fortunately, we all are government officials with a range of institutions, such as State Audit Board, Directorate General of Taxes, LIPI, State University, also Echelon I under the Ministry of Finance.

at Our Munggahan Moment, before Starting the Holy Ramadhan

I, personally feel so thankful of having this class with good teachers which are beyond my expectation, as well as friends who always share joy, happiness also assignments (pfiuhhh) together. In addition, to keep in our memories, we already have a hoodie and a shirt with our class name and AAS icon thereon. Looks cool yeah :P Hopefully our friendship will be last forever...

Above (left-right): putri, mas cahya, mas agus, simon, mba wulan, mas tohari, puji, thariq
Below: rizki, pandu, cahyo, mas bram, me, novi, mas danang

6-7th week: Battles before Deserving a Holiday

Yeaaa...I am writing this post in my early holiday. During the last two weeks of my course in IALF, I would say that it was not that easy to pass through because I had to pass the third practice test in week 6, as well as do the IELTS pre-test and submit my 500-word essay draft in week 7.

The practice test was going like the previous, but I felt unfocused during the listening session and it resulted in a remained constant score compared to my preceding. Similarly, I thought that my writing also showed a decrease huhuhu. But, at least it was over right? and hopefully there will be an improvement since then. Moreover, as days went by, I also realized that I should regularly practice for the task 1 writing, I think it's getting harder now with a variety of the questions and thus the sample answers.

How about the pre-test? Honestly, I did no preparation for this one. But, surprisingly it made me feel relax during the test. I just tried to enjoy doing the listening and reading tests. Hehehe, so it might be true that doing something for pleasure could benefit more.

Lastly, the essay assignment, which I initially thought as a hard one, was ended up. I should admit that I really enjoy the writing and the research but not for the short time-limit. It was stressful to finish reading the journals, making the annotated bibliography and also writing the essay in the given time. But, one thing I thereby learned is that having an adequated annotated bibliography would definitely help you easily and quickly accomplishing the writing. I proved it. Thus, it becomes a good bridging into my future assignments in uni, in sya Allah. And alhamdulillah I got a good feedback from my teacher yet "there are still a few structural problems in the first and second main bodies" he said. It will be my another homework for the rest of the holiday because it may be too early to revise right now. Hope the holiday could be a refreshment before starting the second half of the course. :)

       

5th Week: Dealing with Paraphrasing and Summarising

Let's talk about what I have done in this week. We got so much new knowledge also experience, which were mostly about writing skill. Paraphrasing and summaring...yaa we all know and must be already familiar with this tasks, but I then realised that it was not as simple as my previous thought. How come?

Parapharasing...mainly, this technique becomes essential for referencing someone's writing. In paraphrasing, we only restate the paragraphs (or sentences) in a different style. Otherwise, we would be considered to do plagiarism if we just copy the sentence although we put the citations. At the same time, we should retain the same meaning. 

While, in summarising, we would deal with reducing unnecessary details and examples yet stressing the key information in order to have a quick and easy understanding. Before doing this task, a note-taking is suggested since it helps us getting the key words as well as the main ideas.

Both of them are very useful, I think, as in our future study we will get many books and also journals to read so these techniques will enable us to grasp their substances. Furthermore, it will help us coping with the assignment which is mainly writing tasks. I really should thank the teacher for introducing me the proper methods...hehe. In fact, the teacher also gave us  an assignment to summarise an article which was due on friday. To finish this task, I did reading first, making note, drafting and ended up with a proofreading by my classmate. I also got some comments from Putri, and finally it triggered me to revise some parts.

Image was taken from www.ournettalks.com

Visa and Family Entry --- Getting an Update

According to my initial plan, I was sure that I, Kinanthi also my mom could depart to Australia concurrently. Yet, after attending a briefing held by AAS pre-award team, I was disappointed as they said that it would only possible for a particular case, such as a breastfeeding mom. huhuhu Moreover, I, again, confirmed my case to their representative when conducting another briefing session. Unfortunately, I got the same answer. They asked me to check out avac website in order to get information of visa. Also, they suggested that it is better for my husband applying visitor visa, instead of dependent visa during his 3-months-stay plan in Australia next year because of an insurance requirement for a dependent visa which costs significantly.

Regarding the visitor visa's features, they told me that this visa allows a tourist staying in Australia for 3 months period only. It means that my mom who will accompany me and Kinanthi should return to Indonesia every 3 months :( I still can not imagine since my mom is almost sixty regardless that she usually travels alone when going to Semarang to visit papa's grave, but travelling overseas is different. Later on, I will contact avac office to get detail information about visa features and other related requirements. I hope there will be an easy way for me, Kinanthi, my mom also my husband arriving and staying in Australia as our prior plan...in sya Allah.