work - it was successfully awarded - and to negotiate a western tertiary institute in Australian with my own Buginese knowledge, culture and purpose. sharing this article, the of writing and then having it read, legitimises the point of it - that is, we (and we speak on behalf of each other here) managed to negotiate western academic expcctations and norms from a just-as-legitimate-but-not-always-heard female Buginese perspective written in Standard Auastralian English (not my first choice-of-language and I speak on behalf of myself). At times we linguistic domains until we heard the similar, faint, drum beat across boundaries and journeys.