Guru kaget lihat hasil kue strawberry murid terakhir

What does “ngawur” mean in Indonesian?

A teacher sets a simple task, bake a strawberry cake, and the results go off the rails: «makin lama kuenya malah makin ngawur» (“the longer it went, the more haphazard the cakes got”). Ngawur means “haphazard, all over the place, nonsensical.”

You can do something ngawur (any old way, carelessly) or talk ngawur (spout nonsense). The punchline says it all when the teacher gapes at the last cake: “itu strawberry apa Pokemon sih?” (“is that a strawberry or a Pokémon?”). A handy, very Indonesian word for anything that’s a glorious mess.