On for 2012!

Well, we are now a third into the first month of 2012! The year when London Olympic will be held, the year when the Queen 60 years Jubilee will be held, and the year when apparently I’m starting to write my own blog again after 5 years of inactivity. So, reader beware, that this is going to be quite a long post.

It has not been a good year so far for me. I’ve been experiencing a prolonged illness since early December 2010. It was the most severe illness I’ve ever experienced in my whole life I reckon. It started out when I travelled to Indonesia on the 8th of December for a surprised 80th birthday party for my Mum. It was quite a successful party that she’s thoroughly surprised by it. It’s a good thing that she’s got a strong heart, otherwise things would have gone nasty .  So, it was a 24-hour journey from my home in Sheffield to Jakarta. It is followed the next day by a trip to market to find stuff for the party, and then journey to Bandung where my mother lives, and also trips to shops in Bandung, also to find stuff for the party. And then when we finished, we need to wrap the gifts. The whole journey, trip, and all ended at 3am in the morning, while the party started at 10am. In hindsight, the whole shebang of the party left me with only about 5 hour sleep in 4 days, while I didn’t have a good proper meals in between. I was dead tired the evening after the party and could feel that I was coming down with something. And so it was. I had fever for the next couple of days. It’s a good thing that on the third day the fever broke and I was quite well enough, but.. I had to travel back to Jakarta and on to UK again that day. Another 36 hour journey I had to endure.

Alhamdulillah I got back home safely on Thursday 15 Dec 2011, although I could feel that I was not as fit as I used to. On the evening when I got home I was tired like I have never been before. The feeling went on during the weekend. I was slightly getting better as the next week started that I went to a meeting on Wednesday evening. Alas, when I got home after the meeting, I started to have fever again. This time it lasted for 5 days. I missed my birthday that Friday and the Christmas weekends. After a lot of deliberation, I went to out-of-hour GP on Boxing day. Having heard the whole history, she refered me to the hospital, where I was admitted for the next 3 days. Towards the end of my stay, the doctors was concerned with my inflamed liver, that I had to stay another day. In the end,  I was allowed to go home on Friday preceding the New Year weekend, although my liver was still inflamed. I had to come on Saturday, Monday, and Thursday to have another blood test to monitor my liver. I was still not too well that week: although the wooziness lessen but the bloated feeling lingered a bit longer. Now, is the week I’m officially back to work. Not 100% back to my old self yet, but at least I can function fairly normally.

Having been lying on my bed most of the time for the last 4 weeks, while watching all those new years diet craze and obesity tackling reality tv shows, one thing came clear on my head that I don’t like being ill, and I am obese. As being obese at my age put a higher risk on me to be ill, it became clear that my personal goal for 2012: I AM TO BE HEALTHY THIS WHOLE YEAR LONG and onward! Insya Allah. I’m going to look at my diet, exercise more, i.e. keep on having weekly tennis, join a Zumba class, and generally move more. My aim is either to lose 3 stones (about 20 kg) or lose 20 cm of my waist line, by the end of the year.

Other things that I’d like to achieve this year is to take more photos. I want to increase my photography learning curve this year. Try new things. Experiment. Be curious, as Stephen Hawking said in his 70th birthday speech.

I also vow to write more on this blog. Not only as a record to what I’ve done, what I think, and what I want to do, but hopefully it will also be my legacy. It might be a crap legacy, but hey, at least I will show the world, that I was there and live!

I suppose the theme this year is about getting better yourself so that you can be better and contribute better for other people and for your community too.

Bring it on 2012!

The Blogging Phenomenon

I’m truly amazed on this blogging phenomonen that seems to engross every single person in the world. In the first year of my PhD study back in 2000-2001, I was looking for “a tool” that allows me to write my own finding, thoughts, ideas quickly and hassle-free on my webpage. So, basically, what I was looking for is a blogging application. Couldn’t find one that suits me well. Couldn’t be bothered to write it myself. So I had to be content with the old fashion write-in- your-paper-log way.

Now, look around. Tens of blog applications have been written. Millions if not trillions of blogs have been deployed. It’s like every single person I know has a blog somewhere out there. For various reason: fun, serious, technical, business, spiritual, you name it. Even supposedly serious web sites now are developed based on weblog applications instead of content management systems. I say this blogging phenomenon has gone mad. What even more surprises me is that these people actually have time to write on their blog. Almost everyday! Amazing! Look at me, there’s 6 months apart between my entry to the next!!! And I’m not even somebody special/famous..

Wewe, You’ll Always be in My Heart

A shocking news just arrived as I just got ready to work this morning and received a call from my boss. Wewe has just passed away. I was stunned for seconds. I didn’t actually hear what my boss was saying then. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun (Verily we belong to Allah and surely we will return to Allah).

He was just a simple man, with a big heart. He had been working with my Mum since he was small boy of 10 or 11. My Mum wasn’t even married yet then. He came along when my Mum got married, had five children (me being the youngest of them all) and still was until he passed away. His actuall name was Usup Sudjana. We called him Wewe because my oldest brother couldn’t say his name properly when he was tot, so he called him Wewe instead. Since then he became Wewe. Our Wewe. He had been a family to us. He took care of our house and us the children. Up to a point he never really interested in his own life. Until he found his wife in our house. Then not-yet his wife came to work for us as a maid and he finally got interested in marrying her. I came to his very simple wedding, and he just an irreplaceable part of my brothers’ and sister’s and of course my weddings.

I can vividly remember my times with him during my childhood and teens. When I was about preschool age, he was the one who accompanied me when my parents were working, and my brothers and sisters were at school. He took care of me, changing my bedsheet if it’s wet. Washed me when I’m dirty or even after I emptied my bowel, and all. He played with me, whatever games I wanted to play. Be it crafty games, activity games (which of course made my house which had just been tidied by him becomes a mess again), even cooking games. I remember how I wanted to make a Nasi Goreng dish. I didn’t know exactly how to do it. So I just pour soy sauce, and loads of it, to a plate of rice. I tasted it again and again, still didn’t taste like one, so I just pour more and more soy sauce in it. Until it was just yukky. When he found out he just laughed, take the plate away, put other ingredients in, fried it properly, and gave it back to me. Hmmm it was nice. Another morning saved. He showed me how to feed birds pet. He calmed me down when I was distress or cried. When I was at nursery, he was the one who picked me up everyday. He took my on a bike with a special wooden seat designed and made for me (back then there’s no fancy manufactured child seat like now). If the bike had a flat tyre or something wrong with it, then he picked me up by taking a beca (a javanese rickshaw). He kept picking me up until I was in primary school. By then, I started to be self-concious. I went to a private school where my friends were picked up by a chauffeured car. I told him to wait away from the school gate so that I didn’t get bullied or laughed at. Eventually, I was allowed to take a beca on my own so he stopped picking me up.

He didn’t finish his school. My mum insisted on him going to school. But he never interested in schooling. To a classic intelligence definition, he wasn’t that bright. He didn’t manage to finish lower secondary school. Nevertheless, he could be creative from time to time. He mended things for me (and for the whole family for that matter). He can find a substitute material to mend things and the result is superb. Surely, my Dad should show him one or two things first to him, but well, he eventually did them. When I was a teenager, my Mum gave me a radio cassette player. After a while, it started to do weird things. I still needed a player, a proper player, and yet I didn’t have money to buy a new one, and my parents wouldn’t give me any. So, after I saved up a bit, I sent him to exchange my radio cassette player in a flea market. Of course, I wouldn’t dare to go by myself. A few hours later, voila! I got a new radio cassette player that works better.

He was a patient man. My Dad often told him off because he was a bit slow in understanding things, but he just got by it. Until someday when he later got married, it was his wife that couldn’t take it. She wanted him to work in a factory or something more sophisticated than a domestic helper. She wasn’t sure whether living under the same roof as us will do good to their own family. So he and his family went off. My Mum wept for days. She thought she would never see him again. She considered him as her oldest son. However, as most of us expected, he couldn’t manage to do other jobs. So months later he came back and worked for us again. But unlike before, he now had his own home (of course we contributed to pay for this), and he came to our house during the day. A different settings, but everybody was happy.

The last time I saw him was when I last visited Bandung in November 2006. He looked ill. My parents said that he got some illness, but nobody knows what was it exactly. I felt sorry but I didn’t know what to do. He had been taken to doctors and had taken medications, but he seemed to be in pain still. He was as patient as ever. Whether this illness that’s the main reason why he’s gone, I don’t know. One thing I know is that I really miss him so much. These words only a tiny drop of what Wewe is to me. I know him all my life, longer than I know my own husband, my own children. He is like a third parent to me. So how much could you describe your parent and your moments with them?

Wewe, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in your last moments, but I will always love you.

Sheffield, 17 January 2007

Drool.. drool… d40rule..

Well well well. When D80 came out to market on 15th of September, I thought this is it. This is the camera I’m going to buy… Eh Oh… Wrong. D40 came about about a month or so after that, and THAT is the one I want to buy. Yup. Reviews say that it’s got the similar technology as D80. Much cheaper (hey, I’m not made of money). A bit smaller, at least compare to D50. But hey, my hands are not big either. Smaller means lighter. Lighter means, I don’t have anything to grudge to bring it about. It’s got all the features that I need as a beginner photographer. So, yeah. It IS a perfect camera for me…

My only reservation to this camera is only one: the timing is not perfect. It came out when I just haven’t got the money!!! ( Oh, well. What’s new about that? Turned out, people have to wait till they got their hands on a D40.  Maybe it’s a sign…???

Photography: Interest vs Cost

I have always been interested in photography since I was a small kid. My Dad used to have this SLR camera, which I believe was a Kodak Retina. I forgot which model exactly, but it was cool, because it was considered to be quite an unusual gadget to own in those times. He also used to have this binoccular (oh I forgot which make/model). He even had a black-and-white enlarger then. He said that he used to develop his own photos when he was a student in Zurich.

He used to bring these gadgets to any trip that we went to. We lived in Bandung, Indonesia, which is encircled by mountains, which the Tangkuban Perahu mountain is the closest one. Sometimes in the weekends, we went to picnic on these mountains. No doubt, my Dad always brought the gadgets with him. Sometimes my Dad would be kind enough to let me have a go and take pictures with his camera, that I believe has triggered my interest in photography.

In a trip to Europe, my Mom then bought him Nikon EM because the old camera was not fit for purpose anymore. I think that what makes me fall in love with Nikon cameras. I like its sturdiness. The firm feeling of taking photos with it. The only problem with this camera is that it is a semi-automatic one. You can’t really do experiments with it. However, the results were good and I loved it.

Unfortunately, as time goes by, there are other things that take more priorities than his photography. At the same time, the costs of doing photography as hobbies are increasingly getting expensive, particularly with his wages as a pensioner, that at some point he gave up doing it.

I completely understand this. When I was doing my Informatika bachelor degree in ITB, I managed to get a few moonlighting jobs, from which I could save some money. One of the things that I bought with this money is a Yashica FX-3 Super 2000 SLR camera kit and a Sunpak flash and I never complained. Well, of course, it’s not Nikon, but apart from there was a little trouble that with the shutter that I had to put it on service, it gave me fair quality of pictures. The most important thing is that I can try and experiment with different compositions, appertures, and speed. While it is good for experimenting, in some occasion I would want to just have quick snap photos. Therefore, my husband, who is interested in photography himself, bought a point-and-shoot Nikon camera. Although it is bigger than other point-and-shoot cameras, but it was sturdy, and the results was superb. I love it to pieces and my heart was even more settled with Nikon.

However, just as my Dad, I didn’t have enough money to develop that hobby. The cost of developing and printing photos were quite high. The costs of developing our photos in the commercial photo services was quite high, let alone having our own enlarger and other developing tools and materials. Busy with our firstborn, the frequency of doing photography is even more diminishing. Until, eventually, because we were moving to England, I had to sell that camera and flash.

Not long after we moved to England, my husband bought me a Nikon F60 35-70 kit with additional Nikkor 70-300mm G lens as a birthday present. We also bought a Nikon-compatible flash. Again, we couldn’t afford to buy a genuine Nikon flash, because of its hefty price. But this camera is more than enough for me. It suits me as a beginner in photography. I managed to produce few good pictures that I’m proud of. The only problem is again, about the costs of developing films. And the same old problem recurs…

Until at some point, when I was pregnant with my son, we just wanted to be able to point-and-shoot. By this time, digital cameras were become norms and the prices had become more affordable. Therefore, combining the two concerns, I bought Nikon Coolpix 5400 camera. In terms of its results and costs of ownership, there’s no complain there. It can be used in a fully manual mode, so that I can keep experimenting. However, I soon found out that this particular model is very slow in storing the image, particularly compare to Nikon F60 that I have. There are many moments that I missed because of the camera takes a while in getting ready after every shot. And of course, I also miss the sturdiness of Nikon SLR cameras. That’s exactly why, I’m now still dreaming of my Nikon D80 kit to come true…