Bedog Arts Festival

This morning, our maid told us about this festival held in the studio near her house. The studio is now very large. A few years ago, they bought the land & the spring by the river, previously owned by my maid's family. The price was not too high, but things like that always happened. You know lah, the case of low bargaining power.

Aniway, we (my sis & I) went there this evening. Today's programs were seminar about 'Art, Environment & Community', movies (children, environment & Opera Jawa), and also a dance called Mawar Dance. (mawar=rose)



Okay, call me blind of artistic value. But I did not understand what the dance was about. It started with two half-naked women making out, like lesbo couple. Then one woman left the stage. The remaining performer danced what looked like some random yoga moves (in my opinion). Hohoho.. The men watching that must had been very.. aroused. ;D It was nice though, despite no music & unknown story.

I did not see the Opera Jawa movie. Mainly because I have to get up early tomorrow and it was cold, for my shirt was pretty thin. Since the place was near my home, I didn't think to change or grab a jacket. To be honest, I was wearing my pyjamas.. ;p

Maybe I will visit the fest again for the closing ceremony.. I think with better publication, they could have attracted more people.

Harvest Time: Melon

Last week, when visiting one of the assisted farmer group in Lendah, Kulonprogo, I saw the field was full of balls of melons. Yumm.. Some of the melons were scattered on the road, half-eaten by the farmers, or maybe local people, thus making the air so fragrant with melon scent.
That's one thing I love about Kulonprogo: clean air, except on the main inter-city road. On the village, people often sun-dried their spices on the road. You could smell vanilla and cloves as you passed the road on your way to Samigaluh.

There were few people selling melons on the road. Later I found out, they were selling melons rejected by the distributor. Small part of the melons were spoiled, maybe because of insects or improper handling. Otherwise, they were perfect. Since I was dying to taste it, I bought one anyway, despite those little flaw. It was really cheap!! Only Rp 5000,- each. When I got home, I found that it was really sweet & nice. I wished I'd bought more.. ^o^

Menoreh Green Land

My TPHP friends,
I'm really sorry I didn't upload this brochure earlier. I hope this will provide enough information for our Makrab. If you found the map confusing, please see the self-made map I sent via email. And if you found that map even more confusing..just go ask the locals. Don't bother me to make another map.
I'll see you there on 16-17 August. ^_^
***
Menoreh Green Land is the fund-raising unit of PPSJ (Pusat Penyelamatan Satwa Jogja = Jogja Wildlife Rescue Center). So while having a vacation, we could actually help to save the animals. Isn't it great?


***
More about PPSJ-Menoreh Green Land:
PPSJ dan Menoreh Green Land
Bandung students learn from farmers in nature, cultural tour
PPSJ (the Centre of the Rescue of the Jogjakarta Fauna)

Pretty Kebaya

Since 2006, there's an annual event called Pekan Budaya Tionghoa (PBT; or Chinese Cultural Week) in Yogyakarta, held around the time of Chinese New Year. It's a very nice event and I'm glad to be able to participate on the very first event. Although sadly I didn't come to PBT 2007 and never heard of PBT 2008.

These kebaya were displayed on PBT 2006. They're private collection of Apip's Gallery (Afif Syakur). The kebaya & batik were very old, from 10 to 100 years old, and almost all of them are handmade!

Look how pretty they are!


Me & my friends during PBT 2006:

Wiras, Bay Vety, Me, Dewi.

Oh, gosh! I looked so.. fat! T_T But hey, I swear I'm not overweighted.. yet.

Teletubbies House

This is the new settlement from the Domes For The World Foundation in east Yogyakarta, built to relocate a village destroyed in May 2006 earthquakes. The old village name was Ngelepen, thus the new one was named New Ngelepen. *creative, huh?*

We (me, my siblings, my Aunt & Uncle; my parents were tired) visited this village last year. The village is quite far from my home (in west Yogyakarta). We had to stop and asked for direction so many time, but many people were unfamiliar with the village's name. Finally we asked this old farmer guy, "Excuse us, Sir. Do you know the way to Ngelepen, the new dome-shaped settlement?"

"Huh? Dome? What's that?" He seemed confused and he didn't understand what dome (or kubah in Bahasa Indonesia) means.

Then my sis from inside the car said, "Asked him where the Teletubbies house is!"

Amazingly, the old farmer told us right away in detail. It wasn't very far from where we were. So we learned that the popular name of the village is Teletubbies House.

I wanted to post the pictures but then I forgot in which computer and which folder did I keep the files. Well, it was in sub-sub-sub-folder.. *no wonder I couldn't find them*

And no, we didn't see Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa & Po.

Sekaten Night Market

Sekaten is an event held annually in Yogyakarta to celebrate the birth of Prophet Muhammad. However, in the present it is not so much a religious festival for it has becoming a typical night market. The Gamelan Sekaten still goes on show for a week, from 6-12 Maulud (the third month of Javanese calendar).

For this year, I had made 2 visits to the Sekaten. First with my brother, watching dolphin show. Yeah, it was quite embarrassing for us. Most of the adults watching the shows were parents escorting their babies.

The next visit, I went with my 2006-community-service friends. It was like a reunion, just like the old days, although only 4 people showed up. We tried the 'Haunted Kingdom'. It was disappointing. The 'ghosts' were not scary at all. We had fun though. I wish we could go there again next year.

Eid (part 1)

On the last night of Ramadan (we celebrated Eid on Friday, Oct 12), me and my sister went out to visit our uncle in northern Jogja (we live in the west). Thank God we went by motorcycle, for the traffic was really jammed.

From uncle's home we went south to Jalan Mataram for shoes-shopping. My sister wanted to buy those transparent plastic slippers but ends up buying a black lacey shoes. I bought a pair of fake-leather slippers. They're quite cheap, with the price range between Rp 20.000 to 80.000 and you could haggle for lower price. For example my shoes were initially priced Rp 75.000. After haggling (and I'm not really good at it), the seller finally let them go for Rp 50.000.. *yeayy..!!*
(here for more story in bahasa Indonesia)

At 9.30 pm, most of the shops were already closed. I asked my sister to go south via Alun-alun Utara (north Sultan's square). To our delight, takbiran and lantern festival was being held in front of the Post Office Building. But since it was so crowded, my sister refused to stop. I could only take some picture (most of them were blurred because I took it with phone camera and my sis was speeding).


Lantern in the shape of 'Allah' word


the detail


Beduk lantern

There were many other shapes of lantern: boat, helicopter (which I initially thought was a bullet train ^^), ketupat, etc. Talking about ketupat, we didn't make our own this year. In fact, we only made it once a few years ago. We didn't have any idea that it was so difficult, putting the wet rice into the ketupat pouch. We slept really late that night and almost late for the Eid prayer. The next year, we didn't bother to try again.. ^^

The next morning we went to the field for Eid prayer. There were so many kids with balloons. I believe that's some parents way to keep their kids amused and quiet during the prayer.. ^^ Sometimes we speculate on how many balloons would fly off the children hands.. ^o^

My neighbor Gamal and his balloon..

*more story on the next posting..*

Happy Eid Mubarak

Lihat Kartu Ucapan Lainnya
(KapanLagi.com)

Indonesia: For Sale!

Want to buy Java, Borneo, or Sumatra?
They are for sale, along with other main islands in The World. The mini version, that is. And they are a little bit out of shape compared to the actual things. What's important is that you could become neighbors with Michael Schumacher, Pamela Anderson (who's got Greece Island from ex-husband Tommy Lee), probably also with Rod Steward and David Beckham.
*Yeah, great! Imagine yourself kayaking to the Beckhams' to borrow some sugar from Victoria ;D*

Just prepare US$15-45 millions (depends on the size), and they could be yours. Of course you have to be great and cool enough so the developer will let you own it.
*Hmm.. I wonder if any Indonesian will buy one of those islands..*

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is like bringing SimCity to real life. Look at his projects: Dubai Waterfront, The Palm Trilogy (consists of, from left to right: Jebel Ali, Jumeirah, and Deira), and The World.


That really reminds me of the game I used to play when I was younger.
*Okay, I admit I still occasionally play SimGolf and HarvestMoon till now.. So what?!*.
When playing SimCity or Sim-whatever, I loved to perform cheat so I'd get unlimited amount of money. Then I'd build islands to any shape I wanted, usually square (for easy management), smiley-face, or heart shaped. It's really great, being able to control such thing. I believe Sheikh Mohammed feel the same way, except that it's real money to create real islands.
*hopefully with no cheat involved ;p*

Island-making has becoming more popular, not only in Dubai. (but not in Indonesia though, since we still have 6000 inhabited islands ;p) If you check out the list of artificial islands, you'll find Kansai International Airport -Japan, The Pearl -Qatar, and many more.

Well, if you have the money, the power, and the technology, what stops you? If I have these three, maybe I would do something crazy too. Like building dams around Antarctica and Arctic to prevent the other islands from 'sinking' when the ice melts =)), or inter-connecting the whole islands in Indonesia with bridges =))
*Just wondering.. With 17,508 islands, how many bridges would we have?*

Tchaikovsky, V for Vendetta, and our national songs

Last Monday, I watched NSO's concert at Hyatt with Itha, Netta, and Netta's friend Titin. It was our last girls'-night-out together before Itha departed to Jakarta on Wednesday morning. Too bad Bunga and Truni didn't like classical/instrumental music.

The concert was divided into three segment:
Chris Watson - Jangeran (a classic-romantic piece combined with Balinese gamelan and Balinese dance) [ I Gusti Kompiang Raka - Percussionist Bali Ethnic; Anak Agung Ariawan - Bali Dancer ]
Johannes Brahms - Op.102 in A minor, concerto for violin and cello [ Atsuko Watanabe - Violinist; Yasuro Chomei - Cellist ]
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Symphony No 6, Op.74 in B minor "Pathetique"

It was really nice and romantic, just like the theme "Great Romantic Music". But I almost fell asleep during the last piece. Not because I was bored, but I was so tired after spending the day queuing at the bank to pay the police fine. And the music itself was soothing.. ;)

Listening to Tchaikovsky that night kind of reminded me I haven't found this music piece from the movie 'V for Vendetta' that I like very much, the one played when V blew the building. After googling and wiki-ing, finally I found it at multiply. It turned out to be the 17 minutes long '1812 Overture'. The part played in 'V for Vendetta' was from the minute 15:48 onwards.

There's something familiar in this composition. After listening repeatedly, I found that in minute 6:30 (repeated in minute 6:45, 7:20 and 11:30) the music was very similar to our national song. You only need to add the lyric "dari Sabang sampai Merauke, berjajar pulau-pulau..". It also rings a bell to the song "Garuda Pancasila". Were our national songs really taken from that classical composition?

Btw, just like mentioned in Netta's blog and as written in the program guide:

...So much has been written about Tchaikovsky's emotional power in his music, and his rather tragic end. Either he died of cholera by accident or committed suicide by drinking unboiled water. The debates are still going on.

I found this in wikipedia:

Tchaikovsky died nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, on November 6, 1893.
Most biographers of Tchaikovsky's life have considered his death to have been caused by cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier. In recent decades, however, theories have been advanced that his death was a suicide. According to one variation of the theory, a sentence of suicide was imposed in a "court of honor" by Tchaikovsky's fellow alumni of the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, as a censure of the composer's homosexuality.

What an interesting life back then, huh? No need to drink Baygon to commit suicide, just drink water from the sewage.. :p

Bakmi Pak Pele

Looking for an authentic bakmi jawa near the city? You should go to Pak Pele.. It's located in the southeast side of Alun-alun Utara Yogyakarta.. (though they have a branch in Godean too -near my house, that is- but it's not as good as the original place)

The portion is not too big and the taste is just right, not too salty nor too bland. They have fried rice too..


Nasi goreng Magelangan (Magelangan fried rice): fried rice w/ yellow noodle


Mie jawa godhog (javanese noodle soup)

Price: Rp 13.000 for noodle/rice + wedang ronde (ginger hot drink w/ glutinous rice ball & stuff)