My Experiences of Being an LO

My Experiences of Being an LO

Being an LO (liaison officer) of 26^th Sea Games become a wonderful thing to me. I was really happy I could participate in this great event. There’re many experiences when I became an LO. By becoming an LO, I could directly met people from another country and I learned many things from that.

In sea games, I became LO for Shooting Range. At the first time, I became LO for committee. They were from PERBAKIN (Shooting Community) Jakarta. But, there was new announcement said there were nothing LO for committee because they were still from Indonesia and they were the committee, they should handle us. So, I was an LO for Laos. They were 5 people from LAOS. There were 3 men and 2 women. I just remembered the women, they were Khongkam and Khamla. They were really kind person. But, they couldn’t speak English. So, when we want to communicate with them, we use gesture. When we wanted to asked them to eat, we practiced like we eat something then they understood what we meant. It was hard for me to do gesture all the time. I even try as I could to make them understood with what I meant but sometimes they still didn’t understand. For example, I ever asked what perfume that she used because I like her smell, I just want to know. Then I showed my perfumed intended to make her to show hers, but she tried to smell mine. She thought I wanted to show only, but I said “This is mine (point at me), where’s yours (point at her)”, she still didn’t get what I meant. But, one of them can speak English a little, not much. So mostly I spoke with her.

By talking with people from another country, I learned many things. I met them say in different dialect with me. People from LAOS said the word “laos” by saying “lao”, without “s”. So, when I asked about their country I also said lao, not laos anymore. I also taught them to speak in Indonesia. That’s kind a funny thing when I heard them said in Bahasa Indonesia. Then, I made video about it. Something that I like from them, they like to go by pedicab, “becak”. They showed their smiling when go by pedicab. At the shooting venue, I met them like my friend. They were really such a kind person. So that, when I ushered them to the airport when they wanted to go back to Laos, I felt really sad. I was really happy being friend of them.

Then, when team from Laos had back, my friend as an LO of Philipina asked me to join them to go shopping. I met special new friends from Philipina. They were Venus, Mark, Jayson, and Mom Susan.  They could speak English. So we talked about many things. They said Philipina almost same with Indonesia. The traffic, the corruption, the weather, etc. even the language, the same language like “right”, Indonesia says “kanan” and also Philipina, and “murah” means cheap. I like to talk with them. I do really miss them. But, we still have contact in facebook.

If I can, I want to be an LO again. I love this job. It makes me realize that every person has different way of talking and different way of thinking.