At the same time Oprah was standing in the crowd in Grand Park, Chicago, Illinois, witnessing Barrack Obama's historical acceptance speech, my father, in his sarong, was sitting on a green chair just one meter from our 21-inch TV watching the live broadcast from our Indonesian news channel Metro TV in our home in Samarinda.

It was the most historical moment in the career of the most popular yet inspiring figure -- Barack Hussein Obama II -- in this most modern of American eras. Obama just won the American hearts with 338 electoral votes across the country.

Thanks to modern information technology, our Indonesian news channel succeeded in bringing the world's and America's dream-come-true live to my home in East Kalimantan.

My father perhaps is just an ordinary traditional 70-year-old Indonesian Muslim. But the political episodes in contemporary Indonesia and the world -- especially in the Muslim world -- which are in some ways very much *colored' by America, have successfully kept the fire of my father's awareness of and interest in politics burning.

Sitting on his chair, he looked so overwhelmed by the speech. Though he doesn't understand English at all, he does understand the language of glory, the audacity of hope, and Barack Obama's pursuit of the American dream. My father, like many other Indonesian Muslims who pay special attention to and even give support for Obama, hopes that Obama's presidency can make significant yet good change to U.S. policies, especially from Bush's unfriendly foreign policy toward the Muslim world.

Selamat Obama, and yes, we can change the world for the better. God bless!

ELLIE HASAN

Samarinda, East Kalimantan

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