Recount Text

My Rush Time as a Journalist

I usually woke up at eight o'clock a.m. and went to the Press Center to check the daily schedule of briefings and press conferences. It was usually held by the United Nation officials or disaster mitigation team.

It was challenging to visit different refugee camps to find soft stories, human interest stories. After that I went back to the Press Center to cover the press conferences of the day.

It was heart breaking when I saw these survivors fight for food and secondhand clothing. Unfortunately as they said, the food and clothing were limited and inadequate. Emerging to glaring, fool noon, it was time to go back to Press Center to write stories and race against time. I was always fearing that the internet would come crushing down.

After everything was done, only then I remembered to eat. Most times, I only ate once a day because I always had to rush and again it was difficult to find food. I had to travel quite far. I needed to spend a 30 to 45 minutes by car just to find fresh food.

 Visit to Bali

There were so many places to see in Bali that my friend decided to join the tours to see as much as possible. My friend stayed in Kuta on arrival. He spent the first three days swimming and surfing on Kuta beach. He visited some tour agents and selected two tours. The first one was to Singaraja, the second was to Ubud.
On the day of the tour, he was ready. My friend and his group drove on through mountains. Singaraja is a city of about 90 thousands people. It is a busy but quiet town. The street are lined with trees and there are many old Dutch houses. Then they returned very late in the evening to Kuta.
The second tour to Ubud was a very different tour. It was not to see the scenery but to see the art and the craft of the island. The first stop was at Batubulan, a center of stone sculpture. There my friend watched young boys were carving away at big blocks of stone. The next stop was Celuk, a center for silversmiths and goldensmiths. After that he stopped a little while for lunch at Sukawati and on to mass. Mass is a tourist center
My friend ten-day-stay ended very quickly beside his two tour, all his day was spent on the beach. He went sailing or surfboarding every day. He was quiet satisfied.

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Example of Recount

Read the passage

One day I was setting in the local library, I started to read a medical encyclopedia that was lying on the table in front of me. The first illness I read about was cholera. As I read the list of symptoms, it occurred to me that perhaps I had cholera myself. I sat for a while, too frightened to move.

Then, in a kind of dream, I started to turn the pages of the book again. I came to malaria. Yes, there was no doubt about it – I had malaria too. And I certainly had hepatitis. And yellow fever. And so it went on. I read through the whole book, and by the end I came to the conclusion that I had every illness. There was only one illness I didn’t have – and that was housemaid’s knee.

I sat and thought, and I became more and more worried. I wondered how long I had to live. I examined myself. I felt my pulse. At first, I couldn’t find it at all; then, suddenly it seems start off. I looked at my watch to time it – it was beating 147 times a minute. I tried to feel my heart. I couldn’t feel it. It wasn’t beating. I stuck my tongue out and tried to look at it. I could only see the end of it, but from that I was even more certain than before that I had yellow fever.

I went straight to my doctor, who was a good friend of mine. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “I have every illness in the medical encyclopedia.” I told him how I read the medical encyclopedia. Then he opened my mouth and looked at my tongue, and he felt mu pulse, and he listened to my heart. Then he sat down and wrote a prescription. It said:

• 3 good meals every day
• A two-mile walk every day morning
• Be in bed at 11 o’clock every night
• Don’t read medical books!

I followed the doctor’s instructions, and I am happy to say that I now feel quite well again.

(Adapted from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome , first published in 1889)

 Answer the questions

1. Where this person reading?
2. What was the first illness he thought he had?
3. What book was he reading?
4. What was the illness that he did not have?
5. How did he check himself?
6. What was the doctor’s advice?
7. What do you think of being your own doctor?
8. Have you met people who worry too much about their health?
9. Have you met people who do not worry about their health?

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