My country is plagued with free newspapers. The train stations are flooded by three free newspapers, being De Pers, Spits, and Metro.
The first one claims to be a quality newspaper, while the latter two are just plain horrible and I refused to read them for a while now. Today, however, I decided to give the Metro paper another chance, and unfortunately, it was the last time.
In Indonesia, addressing another human being always goes hand in hand with polite forms. Females are addressed with mbak, or ibu (depending on the age), males with mas or bapak (also depending on the age of the man).
These polite forms go far. Husbands and wives use these "titles", even brothers and sisters. Therefore, almost every one calls me mas (I'm not so old yet ;-) or bapak (or bule which refers to my skin color (white) and being a foreigner).
Today, the Metro paper posted an article about a tragic event about a woman poisoning her four kids and herself, out of money problems. This she apparently recorded with her cell phone.
The article is in Dutch, so I'll translate just a phrase:
In a goodbye letter to her husband Pak, the woman wrote: "Pak, the money is gone. I took the kids to show them heaven".
The name of the husband is not Pak! That's just the abbreviation of Bapak!
As it turns out, the Metro "journalists" just copy news and add their own incorrect conclusions. That's it Metro, now I will stop reading your paper ... again.
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