Tulip Tree

First Week of February

2011-02-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

On Monday I got a call back from Adore Tea. I didn’t get the job. I prayed a lot about this job. I’ve been asking constantly that God will only grant me a job that He wants for me. I wasn’t expecting that after the interviews and trial, the final answer would be ‘no’. But, at the same time I was secretly relieved. Adore Tea is located 45 minutes away by bus and I had to work 6 days a week to start off with which means that I also have to work on weekends. But I didn’t care about those things when I applied; I just want to get hired.

What Greg said to this situation was, “Come on Fionna. I’m disappointed as well, but do you really think you’d be able to work full time, run your Etsy store and do music at the same time? You’d probably look back at this in a few weeks and just be glad you didn’t get this job.”

With that confrontation, I had one of those twisty embarrassing feelings that goes something like- ‘yes I know what I’m in for, but I was hoping you don’t so that I could overlook all those risks and start working however hard I want! I hate to know that you know this all along!’. But all those thoughts sums up into hiding under a pillow going,“O, shut up! Shut up! Shut up...!!!" Greg’s mum also mentioned that she didn’t think the job would be good for me if I have to work on weekends, because that would mean I have to spend less time with Greg.

Knowing that, I thank God for His wisdom and for laying His hands in my situation, as well as everyone who had prayed for me. That night I also learnt what humble cake tastes like. My parents put me through a private school, I travel a lot, have a degree, and yet I don’t need those things to get a job. But with all those privileges, I still grew up feeling like the world is impossible to live in.

The next morning, my friend Meg Milton sent me a quote of encouragement. It is from the writings of Andrew Murray when he was asked from a friend of how he coped during a time of crisis:

“First: He brought me here, it is by His will I am in this strait place; in that I will rest.
Next: He will keep me here in His love, and give me grace in this trial to behave as His child.
Then: He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends me to learn, and working in me the grace He means to bestow.
Last: In His good time, He can bring me out again--how and when, He knows.
Say: I am HERE--By God's appointment, in His keeping, under His training, for His time.”

I rest on those words knowing that God had answered me once and He will answer me again. I picked up what’s left of my courage and my pile of resumes and start knocking on florists doors again. I was scared and tired from the heat, but I’m glad I went because at the end of the day, I found 2 things:

A Canberra handmade shop had opened last year in April. I just happen to walk pass it because it was next to a florist I had hand in my resume into. It’s basically handmade things appearing in the commercial world- and stuff like that just doesn’t happen in Canberra. Caberra is full of talented artists, but there’s always a definite line between ‘retail’ and ‘market’ unlike places like Melbourne or Sydney. I saw so many items there that I’ve seen sold on Etsy and kindda felt like I was meeting familiar faces. So I went up to the counter and ask what do I have to do to get my stuff in the store.

Turns out they also have a big market happening 3 times a year at the Convention Centre. This is really huge for me... it seems like the logical next step as a handmade artist to be involved in stuff like this.

Just before I left for home, I went to Prickles florist near the bus stop. Last week my friend Simon told me that they were interviewing people, but I didn’t go because of Adore Tea. Turns out she hadn’t found anyone yet and after she saw some photos of my flower arrangements, she slot me in for a trial. When she said ‘trial’ I thought it was only a couple of hours of work to see if she likes me or not. Turns out it was actually a 3 months trial period... I only realize this on my first day at work.

My first day at Prickles was nerve racking because there’s A LOT to learn and it’s a very different florist that I’ve ever worked in. I felt like I have to move and learn fast all the time, so it makes me really nervous. With that being said, I only work 3 days a week plus some weekends if there’s weddings involved. And the shop is only 10 minutes by bus from home.

When Greg’s mum heard about this place she said, “It looks like your name is written all over that one”. My friend Amanda wrote to me on facebook ,” what wonderful news. The type of job you want. The place you want. The hours you want. What more could you want?”. Oh my goodness, she’s SO right! If that’s what I want then the job at Adore Tea wasn’t even close to what suits me! It’s really funny how sometimes our friends and relatives are more aware of what you are and what you need a lot more than yourself. Those things are a sign from God... a big fat ‘YES’ coming down from the sky. Maybe sometimes my head is just crazy and unreasonable. I’m just SO thankful to know that someone BIGGER than me is taking control of my life.

January in a Nutshell

2011-01-30T05:06:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness... is it REALLY the end of the month already...???!!!

I’m STILL unemployed but for some reason my time had been chewed up like a caterpillar on a basil leaf. How can this be?

On the 5-10th, me and 4 other random comrades hiked for 6 days along the famous great ocean road. And what I mean by random is that we only knew one or two other person on the team but not the rest. Nevertheless we all got along extremely well to the point where we were reluctant to reach the end. It was a pretty cruisy hike though. The track was very well paved, 3 out of 5 campsites were connected to civilization, and there’s a long drop with a view and toilet papers on every campsite! I even hiked with my snickers. We started from Cape Otway through to the Twelve Apostles.

This photo was taken at the end of the hike, Bec, Jake, Liz me and Amanda posing in front of the Twelve Apostles.

When the hike was over, I tried to get back to Canberra as soon as I can and I was lucky that Amanda was planning to do the same. I was missing my husband and also, my parents are coming to stay over for 5 days, on top of that my friend Sienna is scoring gigs out of nowhere and she asked me to join her band. Of course I jumped right in to that opportunity!

The day I reached Canberra, I looked up for jobs online and found one by “Adore Tea”- a tea house that I have submitted my resume almost a month ago. So the next day I wrote to them regarding their ad and the resume that I’ve submitted. It took me half the day to write to them. An hour after I pressed ‘send’ , I got a call back from them pretty much giving me a phone interview. 15 minutes later, I got offered a face to face interview.

My parents were eagerly waiting for me in my tiny home as I caught the bus back from the interview. The interview went well and I have passed the second test,but they wanted me to have a work trial before they decide if they want me or not. Oh geez, it’s a tea shop! Who would’ve thought it would be this hard to get in?

Having the parents around the house were a bit bittersweet too. Initially they refused to stay at my house because it was too small and dirty for their standards. So I let mum do her motherly thing and she started cleaning re-arrange the whole house, gave up my bed for them while Greg and I slept in our sleeping bags in the living room. Though, I’m just glad that we manage to entertain them enough. Lyndell, Colin and Simon were my knight in shining armour in this matter. They gave me ideas of things to do and has time to do those activities with us! We also celebrated my dad's birthday with my friends. I hope spending birthday with 10 kids in their 20's will make my dad feel a little younger? Maybe?

2 days after my parents left, it was time to go camping with Greg, Liz and Caroline. We’ve been planning this trip since December. By then it felt like I’ve slept more inside a sleeping bag than on a bed. We went to a place called Picnic Point, Liz’s childhood Haven.... I remembered I was feeling very frustrated with myself that whole week in Canberra. When I suddenly found myself sitting in Liz’s car, listening to Jack Johnson driving towards the beach, the feeling of extreme frustration was instantly switched into pure joy. It felt rather comical.

We only stayed for one night in picnic point, but we managed to swim in the beach a couple of times, went exploring, collect wood for the fire and cooked yummy things on it. It was soooo relaxing! I really didn’t want to go back to Canberra by the end of it.

But sure enough, the week after that is spent back in Canberra again. During the week I tried to get myself back into playing music again. I also worked very hard in opening up my new Etsy shop this week. But when I opened it up for critiques, I found myself shaken by some of the comments and didn’t feel very satisfied with the things I was proud of. I’m still trying to process the feedback and evaluating the results for my next point of action.

This is the photo of my name card and jewelry boxes I've made for the new shop I've been working on this week. I've sticked to the name of letterstoamuseme.etsy.com

Australia day on Wednesday was good. Greg was with me at home while I play some tunes on the piano. At night some of our friends and us went for a picnic around the lake, with the rest of Canberra. We saw some live music and enjoyed the fireworks.

So that was January in a nutshell....

Today I’ve done my work trial at Adore Tea and will find out whether I get in or not by tomorrow... can’t wait!!! >.<

Sparkly New Year...!

2011-01-01T05:02:00.000-08:00

Me, Greg, and his brother Luke, were desperate to get away to the coast this New Years Eve. I've been told that it used to be a Melmoth tradition to go away to the coast in Narooma after Christmas. The kids are all grown up now and the house in Narooma is sold, so it's time for us to make our own plans! It doesn't help to plan our holiday 2 days before new year... everyone else had probably booked their campsites 6 months in advance, and everything is booked out.

I decided to give Liz a call to see if we could stay at her place in Tathra for New Year. I was embarrased to give her a call 2 days before new year, but she and her parents were open to our spontaneity and let us stayed in their house. And so, we spent the last day of 2010 hanging out with Liz and her fam, swimming and eating fish and chips in beside the beach in the afternoon. it. was.
AWESOME...!!! A really good break from Canberra really.

We head back home for showers and decided to go back out again for NYE. Out of all our choices, we decided to settle in a secluded nudist beach called 'Moon Bay'. We had to drive down into the forest and walk for about 20 minutes to actually get to the beach. We're really curious about what happen if we do run into those people, but I can tell you now that the beach remained completely empty for the night.

We lit a fire and toasted homegrown strawberries and marshmallow with 3 hours and a bit till midnight. Most of the time we tried to collect sticks and wood to keep the fire going. We also have 360 sparklers waiting to be used. Liz was wondering if we could take sparklers photos with the timer, and somehow that idea evolved into us shaping words with the sparklers.

This is our first trial run trying to write 2011:

Eventually we got better and spent an hour or so doing these:

And then we went crazy and did these (you can sort of figure out our crazy dance moves by the the sparklers. The dots on the ground is pretty much Greg or Luke falling flat on the sand)

And this is what we did with the rest of the sparklers:

So just before 2011 commences, the 4 of us managed to discover the art of drawing with sparklers... who knows,it might catch on. Happy 2011 everyoooooone...!!! :D

This Christmas...

2010-12-27T02:58:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t say too much about what we did this Christmas, apart from that everything was so pleasantly simple. Since harvest is still going, we decided to celebrate Christmas in Greg's parents farm as a small family. The rain that’s meant to bless them this year had ruined some of the crops instead. They lost the quality of the grain which means they will worth less money, but the quantity of grain will make up parts of the damage.

The Christmas tree had no tinsels or had been over-decorated, and although the room had been decorated with some Christmas items, it wasn’t overdone which was really nice. The usual 'Melmoth' Christmas is basically to wake up in the morning to go to church, came back home at 11am and sit around in the living room with some snacks while we open up the presents. We had a few people visiting us during the weekend for some snacks, a chat and a laugh. It makes the house is sitting in the middle of nowhere feels unbelievably alive.

I never celebrated Christmas properly in my own family. I love it that I get to experience my first Christmas as a married woman sitting around the living room, and exchanging presents with the people we love- the way most people would celebrate Christmas properly. Hopefully Greg and I will be able to make our own Christmas tradition this way when we have kids.

We got some unexpectedly awesome stuff this year. Greg’s brother Luke gave us some money for us to buy ourselves a pet fish because he couldn’t wrap them to give it to us. I used it to buy some neon tetras and a catfish with it so far. His other brother, Phil gave us the book, “Ministry of Cooking” by Jamie Oliver which I’ve been burying my head into throughout the weekend. Greg’s parents bought us 2 fold up camping chairs, a tent and a set of gorgeous handmade glass coasters.

Here's some photos for a sneakapeak review of what's going on in the Melmoth house:

Greg's mum got a bicycle from her husband which was a big thing. Greg's dad is really into cycling and so he bought her a snazzy bike in hope that she'll ride with him whenever they can. Although she's not sure if that's what she wants for Christmas, but they end up going for a ride in the evening to test it out. The dog, Lizzi went chasing them away as they ride up along the road and back again. You can see her in the photo chasing the bike, she was pretty determined! She was so exhausted after the run that she collapsed straight to her cushion for a nap.

I had the honor to cook the family Christmas dinner for the night. I was making Indonesian fried rice and the Indonesian fruit jelly that I used to have all the time growing up. Both dishes turned out to be disastrous!!! I'm not used to the house’s electric stove and didn’t realize that I didn't cook certain things through properly. The jelly didn’t even set and we just end up having this failed jelly fruit soup. I was so embarrassed, and I can’t believe everyone ate it regardless. They said it was part of their responsibility that they're willing to take when they agreed to accept me as one of the Melmoths. Hehe… how gracious! I love my family. At least I didn’t make them get sick in the morning! :p

I didn’t take a photo of that moment at all. It was all too embarrassing and I made sure everyone quickly ate all the evidence before somebody took a shot with my camera. So in case you feel cheated, you will get to see some photos of the wheat harvest in action instead…

So, how’s YOUR Christmas been? I'm really looking forward to hear everyone else’s stories when all the madness is over. Happy holidays! =)

Amuseme vs Beadsforpeace

2010-12-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

So, immediately I need to clarify the reasons behind changing a shop entirely even though I’m still focusing in jewelry for both shops. One reason behind it is because I moved from Indonesia to Australia, so automatically everything changes. I have to change the details on every info in listing I give because of the location difference, the postage, the policies, and the list goes on and on. I could still keep the name beadsforpeace and change all those details, but I think this is a great time to wipe it all out because I’ve learnt A LOT after being 2 years in Etsy and felt that Amuseme is going to be too big of a step up from beadsforpeace for them to be combined together.

When I opened up beadsforpeace, I absolutely had no idea what I was doing. I just needed a creative outlet from my super deadly boring job that I’m totally not passionate about. Beadsforpeace was more like, I’ve got stuff, a computer, a camera and internet, let’s do it! Etsy is so affordable that I thought the shop would just be a mini gallery where I can show people the stuff I made. And so, that one fateful day as I was listing my first few items, I got a sale WHILE I was listing them. The moment I found out I ran hysterically to my mum and we started jumping around her room like nuts and spent the night trying to figure out how to pack the stuff! Hehe, that was fun! So, this is gonna sounds a bit silly but unlike my expectations, the night I opened the shop was the same night that I was actually open to the reality that I AM a seller. Though, I was still a bit shy and I never really promote myself or tell people that I’m doing this. I only have one way to promote: do nothing, let mum do all the talking.

Of course everything didn’t really go all that smooth. Year 2008/2009 was pretty much wasted on my stupid 12 hour job (9 hours in the office, 3 hours in traffic) So boring that I thought I might as well be dead. Think that year was like, 60% being bored to death 15% getting strange diseases, 15% travelling and 0% socializing. Anyway… the point is, I just didn’t create enough to actually run and learn about the shop and to be happy.

Year 2010 however, is looking up, waaay up! I can almost say that besides dealing with loads of silly paperwork to move and be married, I spent this year predominantly getting high on creating stuff, and it has been super awesome!!! It’s probably the side effect on being bored to death, I suddenly have the capacity to just burst like crazy. Unlike beadsforpeace, I’m actually planning what I want to see in Amuseme before I open it. My motto, my goals, how I will market my stuff, super exciting stuff like that….

The product is going to be different between the shops because I have found myself getting so ADDICTED to wire. Maybe it’s one of those “You don’t choose the medium but the medium choose you” sort of situation. I just go through rolls and rolls of them without realizing, and the busier I get, the more of a wreck my house gets… I know I’m a girly girl, but I still wish that I’m better at multi tasking than I am now….

So...it’s exactly a week before Christmas… hope you all are getting your preparations sorted and have fun while doing it! :D

Xox

Another Beginning

2010-12-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

2 weeks ago, I stayed up late sketching round about what my new Etsy shop is going to be like. The what, the branding, the logo, the do’s and don’ts. The next morning I unconsciously made the ultimate decision, that being an artist is going to be my primary concern. If I get a job, it will only be part time or casual. Before this I would be looking for full time job if I could. So I went to go for more job hunting in the rain. I came home to the conclusion that the jobs I'm interested in are not available until after Christmas, and I thought that worked out well if I want the new Etsy shop to open up properly by January/Early Feb.

It wasn’t hard to know why I made this decision and what I’m going to do with it, but I try not to think where this journey is going to take me.

I’ve come up with the shop name ‘Amuseme” one frustrated afternoon, it was one of those days when I know I’ve got lots of stuff to do but don’t know what it is…. And the name sort of struck me like someone shouts at my brain. I’ve taken a poll to some friends about the name and they seem to like it. I’m sure whatever it is, it will eventually grow on me.

Although I try not to think about the importance of the brand name when choosing one, I picked up a valuable point from the acapella group ‘The Idea of North’. When they picked their band name, they intentionally picked a completely random brand name because they don’t want their music to define by the brand. I personally think that’s a really good decision to go for. So instead of calling my shop ”beautifuljewelry” I’d rather call it “Possums n Squirrels” or “blah” even.

As soon as I made the commitement, everything seem to fall into place, and my days are becoming more purposeful. I’m suddenly chased by time and becoming more focused in developing my shop before Christmas is over.

It seemed like it was the right decision to make for now. I’m loving my life everyday to just drink tea, be creative, work at home while listening to movie commentaries in the background. I’m really content to just work from morning until the husband arrived home in time to cook dinner. Some days a friend would call to meet up for lunch and it feels SO good to just go without having anyone sneering at me.

One of my favorite things to do for short breaks from work is watching my plants grow. I only planted the seeds with my friend Liz a couple of weeks back, and they’re already sprouting so beautifully and looked sooooo cute!

They're all the flowers and herb seeds I've received from wedding presents and from the bridal kitchen shower. Think I've planted most of them already. The flowers I've got are Dahlia, Nasturium, Forget me Nots, Swan River Daisy and english daisy. I've also planted herbs and cherry tomatoes.

Oh the simple joys in life… I may not ever be satisfied with my own achievements, but I gotta say that God has been very good to me to let me experience this level of happiness in life. =)

Rain in West Wyalong

2010-11-22T04:01:00.000-08:00

When most people hear about Australia, they would probably imagined Uluru and the hot dry dessert in which most of this island covered with. This great country can be seen to be unpleasant sometime, and unfortunately it has been true for the farmers in the past 10 years of constant drought. But, our prayers had been answered in this special year as Greg’s parents farm has finally been getting lots and lots of rain, and it was so incredible to see everything becoming green again!

I remembered when my parents visited their farm for the first time in 2007. Everything was so dry that they were even having sandstorms! The dams were all dried up, and water supplies for the houses are very limited, even in the cities. This is a photo we took of the farm in 2007. Most of the ground is dry. The canola only grows in wet patches and it didn't grow very tall at all. (Greg also still has his crazy hair-do like a Dragon Ball kid back in the day... :p)

Greg’s parents live in a small town called West Wyalong which is North West of Canberra. They own 4.500 acres worth of land that they have been working on for a long time alongside Greg's uncle. After persevering 10 years of drought, they're finally experiencing the complete opposite and had a little too much rain for their crops this year, which is amazing to see! Crops can get 'too much' rain which will make them drown and die, but most of them had grown very well. Some crops that are closer to the house are growing as high and as big as they can get, like chickens on steroids, they almost look like something else other than what they are. The main crops that they’re growing on their farm are canola, wheat and barley with a little bit of lupins for stock food and chickpeas. You can imagine how exciting it is to see these crops reaching its potential growth once again after the farm had been dry for so long!

This is a photo of the canola seeds that developed from the canola flowers. They have very strong distict smell, and are mostly used to make vegetable oil.

... the wheat that's bursting like fireworks,

and the drooping barley.

Greg and I went to visit the farm one weekend and his dad let us ride with him on the windrower. I didn’t know what a windrower was when I got there. A windrower is basically a machine that is attached to the tractor. They're used to cut the dried, tall canola plants that are full of seeds and lie them on the ground so that when it has been cut down, the wind won’t blow all the canola seeds away. We basically went round and around the farm to windrowed the canola, and I've realized that the ride can get a bit bumpy and tricky to do. (No wonder farmers are great drivers!) When we were there it took Greg's dad 3 hours to do the last paddock. They had to do nonstop rounds of windrowing during the previous days so he had to swap with his brother every 12 hours so the tractor never stops.

This is the windrow cutting all the crops, leaving a trail of canola behind it.

This picture shows what's left of it, the canola pile, and sticks of the 'beheaded' canola... Well, they're pretty much dead anyway. :p

I wasn't there when it happened, but Greg's mum sent me a few more pictures to put up on this blog. This is a photo of the header with the draper front picking up the windrowed canola

And this is the header filling the mother bin which is filling the truck to take to the silo (a silo is basically a huge barrell where the grain is kept) with Greg's dad and a huge smile on his face! =)

I'm so amazed by this event. A lot of farmers have given up, but Greg's parents hadn't stop praying and always had patience and hope, even for 10 years! That's like, almost half my life time! We always felt the struggle but we very seldom saw them getting too caught up about it. They always keep trying to celebrate everyday in other things knowing that there's 'bigger' things other than the farm.

Congratulations mum and dad, we love you and are sooo proud of you. You totally deserve the rain. =)

xoxox

Settling in...

2010-11-11T06:22:00.000-08:00

I have to say that it's not that easy to just put up with this much change all at once. Being married, new house, new studio, trying to make new targets…. I thought I'll have a job by now, but so far, I haven't got any call backs. I don't know... maybe it's a good thing to just enjoy my free time.

My days as a housewife have finally arrived. I wash dishes everyday, laundry every week, I try to wake up early to make Greg his sandwiches before he leaves for work and give him his daily dose of hugs when he gets back from work. I watched more tv in these 2-3 weeks then the past 2 years of my life put together. First watching loads of actual tv, and now I’m an Avatar addict (anime Avatar, not James Cameron Avatar). I'm starting to think I can bend certain elements in my dreams... Overall, our first month of married life is great! =)

Applying jobs had been rather exciting. I mean, how is it possible, that when I look online for weeks now, there’s a job opening for floristry in every state of Australia, EXCEPT Canberra??? Now I’m left to knock on people’s door. I've never had to walk into shops and ask for work in my life so it turned out to be a really good experience. I still wouldn't underestimate the first time I had to do it though. I was so nervous and scared I thought my heart was about to pop out of my chest. I've applied to 7 florists so far who told me the same thing, ‘we’re fine now, but we’ll have your resume just in case’. Think it’s time for me to apply for jobs outside floristry hey?

Regarding the house... well... I think it's getting there. We had a house inspection last week. It was quite funny because when the agent came by the house at 9:30 am, I was asleep on the couch in front of the tv! Haha! XD The house were already clean by then so I don't have any problems with it apart from being awkward. The TV is still sitting on a crate and we still don’t have a bed but The inspection was a success regardless. If you see these photos, you can see that the house has well... it's neater...

Before..

and after...

And finally... my Etsy shop. My studio is starting to take its shape slooowly, and when I start complaining to Greg that life is starting to get frustrating (usually caused by my inability to prioritize, which caused by lack of pressure to do anything) , Greg said to me, “You should set yourself some goals. What about try to make at least 1 jewelry per day?” I started on Monday, today is Thursday, and I’ve already given up. It’s my fault really, I tried to design and make 1 jewelry per day, and wire jewelry is not exactly simple and straight forward to make. Hm... need to rethink of new strategy...

This is the earrings I started on Monday, and finished on Tuesday arvo... I'm really proud and love the result! Except the earrings are facing on the same direction, so I will have to make the mirror image of this shape to pair these 2.

This is really cool that the internet is moving fast in this country. Should try to sharpen my inner journalist and blog more... :p

Mmm... Rhubarb Souffle!

2010-11-03T17:46:00.001-07:00

In the midst of moving around funiture, applying for jobs, re-setting my Etsy shop,cleaning the house, I have been cooking quite a bit. I've never spent this much time in the kitchen. It must be an early sign to being a housewife! :p Our kitchen is tiny, but it turns out to be a neat little place to be!

The cookbooks that I've bought is coming to use. I'm a very unexperienced dumb cook but always tries to achieve higher things without knowing. Normally I just look for a recipe in a book that uses ingredients that I already have in the fridge. I thought that if I have the ingredients in the fridge, as if I won't be able to do what a recipe tells me to? And of course, I was very wrong...

So yesterday night, I was determined to make a rhubarb souffle, not really knowing what a souffle was. I just happen to have 4 unused egg whites in the fridge and the picture looked yummy in my book. Good thing Caroline came over randomly just as I was about to make it. She is such an incredible and versatile cook, and I think she had saved my stupid attempt. She told me that I'm brave wanting to tackle a souffle. Think that just made me realize, I probably shouldn't do this on my own...

I have to say the progress of making this souffle is reeeally delicious! We couldn't stop licking the rhubarb compote out of the bowl! We also made Rhubarb bellini, which is rhubarb compote stirred in with champagne while we're waiting 20 minutes for the mix to cool down

(Hm... don't you think our dessert is starting to look a bit like the picture...?)

we folded the meringue with the compote and put it on top, and it's ready to be put in the oven!

30 minutes later, this is what we get! Doesn't that just looked amazing...?! :D

As soon as Caroline pulls the tray out of the oven, it's time to eat! 3 hours of cooking, and we finished eaiting it in 10 minutes! Shouldn't take that long, but it was our first attempt so we think we did well. Afterall it was VERY yummy, everyone should try making it! It was totally worth the effort and now I finally know what a souffle really is! Yippie!

Ps: If you're curious, I got this recipe from Jamie's Oliver cookbook that I own (which is an awesome book btw) , or you can click on this link for the recipe and try it out yourself! Have fun! =)

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/rhubarb-and-custard-kinda-souffle

xox

A very big update

2010-10-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

It’s been exactly 3 months since my last post. A lot of things had happened during those times, that I really wished I had time to blog about, but I guess it will just have to catch up eventually. So, here’s my story in a nutshell:

I have nearly finished my bridal floristry course that I mentioned about in my previous blog. Just before I had my final exam left to do, I have been granted my prospective marriage VISA and it’s time for me to move to Australia and get married! It was a very painful process to get the VISA so it was very big news when I had the green light to move over.

So I packed everything into a container and sent it to Australia. When I got there, I was living out of a suitcase for 1 and a half months and the wedding preparation had been extremely busy and stressful. I’ve been trying to do as much preparation as I can while I’m in Indonesia but lots of them need to be prepared in Australia. I was trying to design and make my own décor and flowers and I got a bit obsessive about the projects, but everyone was very supportive about my crazy ideas and we managed to pull off most of the projects. This is a photo of a bucket of origami paper roses that we made to be use as the table placement.

While that was going on, Greg and I managed to secure a house for our married life and organized our honeymoon trip to Japan. We managed to get there in the end and we visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka as well as visiting our friends in smaller towns at Yamanashi and Yusuhara. Here is a photo of Greg, Me, Yuka and Hoshi in front of Mt. Fuji on a clear day. =)

Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a little bit more about the things we made for the wedding because it has been a very interesting development. The wedding was a big success, everything went beautifully and the weather was perfect for our outdoor wedding venue. Our wedding video is even featured on Australia’s wedding website: www.theknot.com.au

This video is shoot during the day and is shown in the evening at reception. I think they've done an amazing job, so check it out if you can. And yes, Greg managed to play 'Left for Dead' with his groomsmans just before the ceremony.

And now here I am, sitting in my messy little home with my husband, waiting for the next big thing. Christmas is coming so getting my Etsy shop up and running again would be essential. And wow, I'm still trying to get used to their new look! It’ll be a bit of a challenge with the house still messy and we’re still trying to get furniture inside the house. We have no bed, no microwave, no studio (which will be exciting for me to set up), even our tv is still sitting on top of crates!

The next obvious dilemma for me now is to find a new job. I'm looking to work in a florist, and as far as my searching capabilities can see, there is no positions open in Canberra at the moment. So I'm picking up my courage to face my fears and knock on florist doors to simply drop my resumes in! Wish me luck!

The first photo is courtesy of silas-photo.com
The last photo is courtesy of benthomasphotos.com
The video is courtesy of papercranes.com.au

Quest for the black bouquet

2010-06-28T03:25:00.000-07:00

My mentor Andy held a grand opening for his brand new floral school! To celebrate, he held an exhibition of floral arrangements made by everyone who are willing to put in.

What makes this event even more special is that Andy had incorporated his passion for the colour black in every aspect possible. His new studio is filled with black furniture. Him and his assistants always wear black outfits to work. So it seem natural that the theme of the exhibition would be, "Quest for the black bouquet"

It's very interesting that as a world class florist his favorite colour is seldom found in a natural floral materials. So I guess you could say that this exhibition is a step forward in completing that journey to explore the not-so-obvious possibility.

I was only signing up as a new student the day I got offered to put in a piece for the exhibition. And here is my piece:

I'm so grateful that Andy is open to combine my interest in wire jewelry and plants for this piece. This piece is made out of thick, but light aluminium wire that is wrapped with 5mm black ribbon. (Took me about 5 hours to just wrap the entire wire with ribbon). I decorate it with pearls and garnet with swarovski crystal that sits at the throat area as focal. Just before the necklace is being displayed I worked on putting the fresh baby roses and ivy leaves in incorporate the floral element. Without water, I knew the baby roses will shrivel up after being displayed for a day so I named the piece "Rose Tea Lariat"

I had no time to shop around for fabric to dress the mannequin, but the batik that's been sitting idle in my cupboard for months had proved itself to be useful! =)

Click on this link to see photos of other exhibitors:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=236186&id=522165445&l=7e3d998b96

Enjoy! =)

Still here!

2010-06-28T01:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anybody reads my blog but I still feel guilty about not updating it. I'm not trying to make excuses, but there are reasons for that. The internet at home is not fast enough to update photos. When I had an office job, I used to be able to upload photos at work. I have now lost that advantage.

Admitedly, the only thing that suffers is not just this blog, but the speed in which I update my new items in shop and updating facebook photos.

To make it even worst, I have discovered from my recent trip to Shanghai that China had banned facebook, blogspot, and google. They didn't block Etsy, thank God. I think I would suffocate if they did. With that being said, I had a lot of fun in Shanghai. =)

So worst comes to worst, I often visit the closest starbucks from home to buy my tall vanilla chai latte and high speed internet.

I just want to share treasuries that have included items from my shop. They're not that new now, but I've been itching to share this and am still very honored and excited to be included by these artist.

Treasuries compiled by Sema from www.zuzusworld.etsy.com:

"Choose your Style" featuring my mountain tears earrings

"My best friends" featuring my gift box:

"Rain, rain go away" complied by www.kidsloveletters.etsy.com featuring my partly cloudy earrings:

Many thanks for you both in adding my items in! I love the look of them as always!:D

So says my shrink(s)...

2010-06-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

It has been exactly a month since I last post on this blog, and a little over a month now since I’ve quit my graphic design job in my dad’s massive family business. I have to admit, I had been quite distracted in the past month, but I’d like to think that the time had been well spent. Since I’m completely free, I have finally discovered waking up with a full doze of sleep every night and then never seem to find enough time during the day to do the things that I wanted to with my excess energy.

So in the past month I have been going to the gym a lot more regularly and enjoying it immensely. I have also taken that bridal floristry course that I always wanted. I pay my visits to the studio every second day on average. I played with flowers, hang out with the housewives, other artists and joke around with my teacher and his assistant. I think about planning my wedding every now and then. It’s still 5 months away, but most decorations are going to be handmade, so it’s fun to take the time to do some research, practice new techniques and hunt for treasures around Jakarta. I’ve discovered supply stores that are so incredible that even Jakarta’s signature chaos, smog, rubbish and crazy traffic doesn’t stop me from wanting to go there often.

So while enjoying the good life and happy for once, I have also been seeing a shrink. My dad asked me to and I obeyed him without much curiosity. So one morning I showed up to this guy's office, still only half awake I realized that I don’t even know the name of the person I’m seeing.

It turns out my sessions with the shrink had been very helpful and relevant than I expected. He was willing to talk to me through every important facet of my life that may threaten me to stumble if I wasn’t prepared, such as premarital counseling, realizing past family problems that affects me as a person now, and career.

Career happens to be my current primary concern. We discussed about my inability to focus on one subject long enough to make a career out of that subject. My fiancé told me that in average, a person would change their career 7 times in their lifetime. Well… I'm still 24 and in the past 3 years I’have finished a music degree, worked as a florist, worked in an office, worked as a part time graphic designer and of course maintaining my Etsy shop as a jewelry maker. 5 completely different career, done in 3 years! Clearly, isn’t that a proper recipe for trouble? I begin to wonder if I may have escaped from being diagnosed with ADD, hence my inability to focus on anything.

I brought up this issue to my florist mentor, Andy. He is open to a wide range of artformsother than just flowers. His knowledge, easy going personality and non-judgemental nature made him more than just my mentor. He could easily be my ‘other’ shrink. He told me before he chose flowers as his primary medium, he also did a wide range of other things. He was formally trained in interior design, he was also trained in piano, cake decorating, hair and make up artist. He chose flowers as his medium because he saw the need for more creative flowers arrangements in Jakarta. It is something new that hadn’t been done before, and also because flowers don’t last long. Once they are arranged, they are thrown away and his job is cleared.

I brought up to him my interest in jewelry amongst others. He was very supportive to that idea for various reasons. He encouraged me to leave everything and take formal training. I wasn't so sure how to tackle that idea, but then he started talking to me passionately in what he called his ‘broken english’,

“Make sure you stick to the jewelry for AT LEAST 5 years Ok?! Don’t look to left and to right and then cheat on other things like a person cheat on their boyfriend or girlfriend! Otherwise before you know it you think you like cooking, and then you like eating and then become the person who taste food and then the person who writes about food and then becomes a journalist and bla, bla, blaaa…!!!”

Yes my dear sir, point taken. I get it. No cheating.

Now we shall see what will happen...

Inspiring Women: Elizabeth Galton

2010-05-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

As I was running on the treadmill this morning, I simultaneously watched my first episode of an investment tv show, Dragon’s Den. I only knew of Dragon’s Den from the TV show “IT Crowd”, so it was kindda cool to see the real thing. It has to be more than a coincidence that at the exact hour when I went running, on a tv that could’ve been put on any channel, they showed a 2005 Dragon’s Den episode where a high-end Jewelry designer Elizabeth Galton took the spotlight. Elizabeth was only 28 when she appeared on the show.

I am intrigued that out of so many people that proposed their inventions, a jewelry designer would out beat them all. She took the spotlight not because of her solid background and experience in jewelry design and sales, but also her knowledge in business, and that was a big plus for her in having the dragons securing 110.000 pounds investment (with 30% share) that she needed.

I’m just quoting straight out of the episode here straight from my memory. She first collaborated with Mercedes Benz in an advertising campaign in 2000. She sold 5 necklaces in one add for 6.000 pounds each- that’s 30.000 pounds from one add. I was really impressed when the Dragon’s asked her about where her business is going to go, she has her business plan and financial forecast planned out already and was very confident about it. If I was in that room being bombarded by questions and criticism, I would cry. It’s just amazing how she kept her emotion still.

Ok, I’m not the sort of person who cares too much about money, power or even mass produced anything. But I do believe that Elizabeth is more of a designer than anything else and it's awesome that she combine that with her business brain.

Here's an interesting article about her career and appearance on the show:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/2922418/Dragons-Den-fired-investors-interest.html

I hope you are inspired! =)

"Orchid Gem" Necklace by Elizabeth Galton commissioned by Swarovski.

M(a)y Jewelry Clearance Sale!

2010-05-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!

I don't normally advertise on my blog, but I thought this news is worthy to be posted here.

My Etsy shop, Beadsforpeace is having a jewelry clearance sale this month! Almost half of the jewelry stock are 25% off (38 items to be exact). Once they are sold, the design of that particular item will be discontinued (unless you beg me nicely which works... sometimes...). So if you like anything you see, get them quick before they are gone completely! Price starts as low as US$5.25 through to US$30 (not including postage). All jewelry are dreamed up by my little big brain and lovingly handmade by my 2 little hands, so it's a real bargain right?

This sale ends by the end of this month (Tuesday May 31st). This is my first clearance sale eversince I first opened the shop in 2008, so I don't do this very often at all! Feel free to contact me in whatever way pleases you or post a comment on this blog if you have any questions!

Here's a link to the clearance item list:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Beadsforpeace?section_id=7011429

Looking forward to hear from you! :D

Awesome stuff!

2010-05-03T09:11:00.001-07:00

My fiance bought a lot of magnets from www.zenmagnets.com and the item had just been sent today. Their sent notification email goes like this:

"After a rigorous 4 step process of verifying the quality and consistency of each and every magnet, we donned silk gloves and placed it into a sacred padded envelope made of magic and lined with Unicorn fur, sealed the envelope with an adhesive made from strands of Gypsy hair, and wrapped the whole thing in a snazzy looking faux gold leaf paper, with elm leaf inlay from Costco. Unfortunately, by the time it gets to you, all of that fancy stuff will likely have been picked clean by the greedy postal service employees. Please don't be surprised to see just a plain padded envelope."

Now that's an idea if you're an online seller! What a fun alternative to a boring "your item had been shipped" email notification! Totally worth the read!!!

I will never be bored

2010-05-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Oh wow, time had moved fast in the past… 3 weeks! Can’t believe that was the last time I post something!

So what's been happenin…?

I’m now well and truly back to blogging again because I’ve quit my job this week!!! I had to resign anyway because of my big move to Aus, but I end up resigning 1 month earlier than planned after a little chat with my fiancé on a suposedly lazy Sunday afternoon when my brain was about to explode. I was very reluctant to quit thinking that I'm not quite ready to move on, but my parents supported that decision, and so voila! Je suis… sans emploi (I am… unemployed).

It was hard to get around thinking I wouldn’t be going to work here again. I suddenly feel vulnerable, floating and have lost quite a bit of my dignity… though my mum would say to me, “What dignity?” – it didn’t come across right at first. I thought she was saying that I've got none, but I think what she really meant was, “ Who cares what everyone else think?” ... lets hope so anyway :p

My high school jazz teacher Mr. Retkee told us that the reason why he loved jazz music so much is because his number one fear in the world is boredom ( I can only remember this because he likes to repeat himself… a lot). Jazz music allows endless improvisation that takes away life’s boredom. But I realize now that music and art is like air supply to us artists. We have no choice but continue to be creative if we don’t want to start to choke and so for that reason, I will never be bored.

Just looking around my bedroom there’s already so many things that I feel the need to catch up on. Next to the bed is my neglected keyboard and audiobox, and next to that is my cleaner than usual beading table. On the computer my blog and Etsy shop had been quiet in the past weeks, online tutorials are waiting patiently to be tried and tested. Also after 2 wedding floral gig I had earlier this year, it made sense to take bridal floristry course in my spare time. Working on my wedding and start packing for my big move to Australia is supposed to be at the top of the list yet I keep forgetting about it when my activities gets slightly more interesting than usual :p.

I’m currently super worried about money matters after quitting the job. I’m not sure why. My fiancé and parents are more than willing to help, but it comes down to the dignity problem again. It always feels better using your own money to buy stuff than someone elses of course. I guess this is the bit where I have to stop worrying and really trust God 100%.

On a lighter note, I’m super duper happy seeing that it’s Monday tomorrow and I don’t have to go to work! O yea... I can definitely get used to this!

Wrapping Briollettes

2010-04-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to give beading a little break in the next couple of weeks as I try to make more effort in preparing my wedding. I usually try to add new designs every week, so after this week I will only list new things whenever it comes along. Custom orders and the shop will still be stocked.

I’ve planned to combine my drawing and computer skills together to create pictures and logos for the wedding. I still need a lot of practice so it will be my priority to do so until I get most of my designs planned and finished.

Though, during Easter weekend, I procrastinate on that idea and ended up beading anyway. I often see beaders in Etsy wire wrap their briolette around and around the top to create some sort of a cap. It looks so nice I want to try making some as well-except I couldn’t find any tutorials on it.

So after a couple of hours playing with wire, trying different techniques until I found one that worked well for me, I finally came to a technique that would give a perfect result. The next day I went to the market to get some Swarovski briolettes (more than I should, as usual), came home and started making jewelry all day. I fell asleep unconsciously in the evening because I was so exhausted – but that's a different story that I will share in a future post.

Enjoy! =)

Spring Chicken

2010-04-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I came back home from work finding 600 duck eggs in the kitchen. I’ve never seen that many duck eggs in my life all at once before so it was kindda cool to find them in my own kitchen. The only reasonable explanation for this occurrence is that they’re going to disappear all at once and I shall find them again one by one as Easter approaches.

Well, the next day all the eggs DID disappeared. Today is Easter and some of the eggs made it back, except they all came back with a hen on them. So I guess the ducks didn’t want them and the chickens decided to adopt them. Not just any chickens, they are all smaller than most normal size chickens, have googly eyes, very cute and comes in a variety of colors and patterns. They also double function as a pot mitt.

As it turns out, a family friend of ours (Mrs. Evi- homemaker genius) decided to create these chickens plushy to hand them out to people at church for Easter. They are all handmade by the ladies at church, all 600 on them. It’s a pretty good effort if you ask me.

Happy Easter Everyone! =)

Dreamy Blue...

2010-03-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got informed by Sema from zuzusworld.etsy.com that my blue flower earrings were featured on another Etsy treasuries that she collected! How exciting!!! The blue theme for this treasury is sooo wonderful and just looking at them soothes my soul. I definitely think that Sema has got a talent for collecting a wide range of items and putting them together harmoniously. It is such an honour to be included amongst other beautiful items that she featured. Thanks Sema! =)

Please have a look at Sema's amazing handmade creations at www.zuzusworld.etsy.com

To have a look at my earrings that she featured, click on this link: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32705919

Good day everyone!=)

Stuff I made...!

2010-03-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

Just showing you off some stuff I made well actually... last week. We changed our internet provider at home and it's way too slow to load photos. The only 2 places that provides me with descent internet is at the office or at starbucks. So, if I'm a bit slow uploading photos in the next couple of weeks, that would be why.

I also gave up taking acceptable photos with my pocket camera. I'm trying out photo-shopping my pictures until I manage saving up to buy a better camera. No cut and pasting involved, don't worry. It's mainly to do justice of the colours more than anything. Enjoy! =)

"Spring This Year..." simple jewelry set with crystal, pink jade and faceted light green serpentin. I use sterling silver chain, earwires and a heart rhodium toggle. Light, simple, sweet and stylish!

"Cornelian Dream" Long necklace. An interesting mix between cornelian stones, crystals and biwa pearls. A great piece if you like dangly necklace.

"Sundusk" is a 2 tiered choker necklace using various cornelian stones, sterling silver chain and wire. This piece is slightly experimental, I imagined it, sketched it, failed some experiments and finally came up with this necklace hence the out of the ordinary result.

The following jewelry is heavily influenced with the copper vintage look. Materials are mainly swarovski pearls, swarovski crystals and chains.

"Copper constalation" matching bracelet and necklace. The pearls and crystals are placed randomly but making sure that they are placed in balance. It requires a little bit of putting out and replacing pearls which chews up a bit of time, but I really can't help myself... XD

"Classic Beauty" bracelet, adorned with vintage-like rose charms and other dangling beads. I love this bracelet so much and very tempted to keep it for myself... it's... so... preeetty...

Want to see more pictures or more info? They're all being kept in my Etsy shop so drop by for a visit if you like. Go to www.beadsforpeace.etsy.com and just click on the "New This Week" Link in the shop sections on the right hand side of the page.

Good day everyone! =)

Blackberries for the win!

2010-03-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

My blackberry bracelet got featured in one of the Etsy treasuries today! This is my first time to be featured and I'm so, sooo happy!!! Somebody out there like my stuff! Yaaay! This treasury looks so mighty delicious! Just staring at it makes me smell blackberries in the air, and blackberries don't even grow in Indonesia. The other items make my bracelet look 10 times better than when it is out of context. O, the power of treasuries. I love, love, looove it!

Thank you so much Sema for adding me! Please check out Sema's shop at www.zuzusworld.etsy.com for her amazing handmade items! :D

Cheers everyone!

Engaged, Officially

2010-03-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

And so here we are, the final weekend of my Australian trip is ending with my own engagement party. I have successfully put on so much weight during my trip ( you can tell from my photos), clearly I have been having too much fun eating those Australian chips.

We invited Greg’s family and our friends to have a bbq beside Ginnendera lake to celebrate… other than that, we didn’t really plan much else.

I treated myself to go to the farmers market in the morning with Jess and Anita to buy whatever I feel like serving on the party. It also worked out as an excuse because I'm in love with markets! I end up getting some fabulous sugar plums and an amazing bunch of dahlia’s to decorate the table.

It was a chaotic morning to begin with. Our picnic spot had been taken over by someone else, and what’s left is picnic table and bbq in the middle of the sun. The rest of the place are extremely crowded with people too. I got upset and panicky… it took me awhile to convince Greg to move at the state I'm in, but we finally did. It was a bit of a hassle to move everyone, but the place we moved to is very shady and quite. It was worth it.

It was a great BBQ. Greg's dad said grace for us before we begin to eat. Our guests are involved with 3 groups of people. There’s Greg’s family, Greg’s church friends, and my friends. This party had confirmed me of the random collection of friends I have. None of them belonged in a particular set of group, just random people I meet that I somehow get along, and they somehow knew each other from somewhere else. Greg’s friends are the cool people sitting on the picnic rug under the tree looking at my friends going, “What’s up with all the hats?” Haha, I love my friends, they’re all fruitcakes. I’m still trying to get to know Greg’s friends, I guess I’ll have more chance when I move there.

I spent most of the time talking to people I forgot to eat. I sent out invitations with more of ‘sorry I can’t make it’ response than positive ones I thought I’ll only have 10 people on the picnic table with a $200 worth of meat and a bucket-full of fruit juice ice cubes. But in the end I had so many surprises I feel like I’m sitting in a concert with the ‘surprise guests’ turning up. There were friends I haven’t met in years, and friends who had driven up from out of town to be there. It made me so, so happy to have people that I love to be there.

And guess what? All 3 couples that got married in these past weeks had somehow finished their honeymoon and made it to our party.

Mr. Darran and Mrs.Sarah Holder:

Mr.Henry and Mrs.Joanne Halder.

And Mr.Nat and Mrs.Melissa Walker.

One of the highlight there is that we were going to have speeches. I wanted to hide behind Greg the whole time because I was shy… for good reasons. It’s not our wedding day and people already said embarrassing things about me and Greg. I have to say that in this case, Greg’s friends are the better story tellers. My friends had known me waaay too well to be able to blow all my secrets that made me want to dig a hole and hide, and Steve particularly is having difficulty to know when to stop. But all of them made me laugh and some made me want to cry even. My relationship with Greg would’ve been so boring without the people we share our lives with.

At the end of the speech, Greg’s grandma said prayers for both of us, and when she finished it felt like we are now properly engaged.

We took another quick family photo as we might not be together for much longer. I'm leaving for Jakarta the next day, Joanne and Henry are moving to Bangladesh permanently sometime in May and I wouldn't be back again sometime after that. So here's to us!

When the party was almost over, there is one thing left to do…. I have to announce my bridesmaids. This issue had been one thing that had been scaring me for years. Sometimes I even wake up in the middle of the night feeling all worried about it. One time I got so desperate I asked David (who's living in Germany) if he would be my bridesmaid. His response was "Can I say no and still be invited?" I told him that he's allowed only if he brings back a life-size gingerbread man from Germany to my wedding. He liked the idea, and planned to get an extra one way plane ticket for it.

The problem is that, I don’t have a sister or that one particular best friend. But during this trip, I have made the decision, and they will have to know before I leave the country the next day. Greg wanted 3 groomsman, so I picked 3 bridesmaids, and one of them is Caroline. When she told me she’s leaving because she needs to take some people home, I had a little battle inside my head. Should I just email her? Call her via skype? No, no I have to tell her face to face! Ok, how?

“Don’t go yet!”

“Why? ”

“Just, don’t go yet!”

“Do you need help?”

“Yes, I need help!”

O great, now I have to find an excuse for help…. O look, Jess is just sitting on the picnic rug by herself, and Liz vaguely standing behind me! Quick, grab her! I pulled Caroline and Liz and sat them down on the picnic rug where Jess is and said, “Ok you guys, I’ve thought long and hard about this… but… you guys are gonna be my bridesmaids for my wedding… I’ve thought looooong and hard about this… … blab la blaaa….”

Ok, so I couldn’t get over about the ‘long and hard’ thoughts because it was super long and hard to come up with that decision, but all 3 of them were a little too shocked and happy to notice the weight of seriousness in this matter. Jess said, “Wow… that’s a big honor…” Liz was giggling going, “Wow, I’m sooo… happy…!!!” and Caroline was making ambiguous Luis Armstrong sound sort of laughing voice and smiled so crazy it made her face look stupid. Hahaha… I’m laughing my head off as I’m writing this… aaaah… memories…. So, why was I so stress again?

I didn’t realize this, but I picked 3 different people from 3 different era’s of my time in Canberra. I don’t know how well they knew each other, but I’m sure it will all be crazy and fun!

Another highlight of the event is of course, the presents! I have never seen piles and piles of real presents dedicated for my household before. Not since my 6th birthday or something. It’s fun opening them up too. Pillows, towels for two, queen bed sheets, a set of wine glass…. Hm… was that my engagement party or my wedding just happened?

Because I felt nothing but love, love, love and looove...!

This is the triple layered chocolate cake that my friend Prabha made for the party. It disappeared as soon as it was served! Thanks Prabha, it was sooo yummy!

Notice how this post had better pictures than usual? My friend Ben Thomas took all these photos except 2 of them. You can visit his amazing site at:
www.benthomasphotos.com

And so, let the planning begin! =)

Melissa and Nat's Wedding

2010-03-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

The third wedding is of my x-housemate, Melissa who is now married to Nathaniel- also known as Nat. Their wedding was held in a small town called Nimmitabel, 2 and a half hour drive South of Canberra.

Having to live with Mel for one year, I get to know her well more or less. She’s got some habits that people would think of as strange. For example, she likes to bring empty yogurt buckets from the café she works everyday. She doesn’t want to waste them so she brought them home to be used as pot plants to grow herbs. Though… she had collected so many of them that our house verandah have got stacks of bucket from floor to ceiling. She loves the earth and in return hates wasting resources, and will go with whatever is green and organic. She studied rocks at university, but came out not wanting anything more than to be a mom with lots of kids. She also thinks systematically. Her arguments are usually verbally numbered. She’s also very quiet at home. Coming back home from work she would go straight to her computer and stayed silent… and I guess that’s how she met Nat on a facebook game.

It wasn’t until I went to the place that Nat grew up in, I realize how Nat, and the rest of his family is everything that Mel had ever dreamed of. Nat’s parents bought thousands acres of forest where they brougt up their kids. I quite enjoy visiting their property. Their living space is a combination of a house that they've buit themselves, a junkyard, Bianca the guard dog, chickens, ducks, vegetable garden, a green house, a half-made mud house and a dam. Nat is the oldest of 8 siblings and his youngest sibling is still a baby. For some reason he also likes to verbally numbered his argument….

The following are some photos from the Walker's property, This is their organic garden:

The half made mud house with the glorious forest background:

And the dam with the tilted sign that vaguely translates to, "Do not jump in":

Mel had asked me to make her and her bridesmaids jewelry as well as their bouquets. I finished making all the jewelry at home, but I was quite nervous in making her wedding bouquet as this is my first time, and it’s for real! Argh! Mel might not care so much about the flowers, but I still think she’s got a lot of trust in me.

I was lucky enough to get the flowers that I need from the wholesaler since the wedding is on the valentines day weekend. I got pink and yellow lilies from the supermarket as a backup, purple lisianthus and irises from the wholesaler.

On Friday when we arrived at nimmitabel, I had to go on a quest to pick some wild flowers to put in the bouquet. We went to Nat’s parent’s property to look for them. I end up picking some wild purple clovers and brackens for the bouquet.

I also took this advantage to have a little tour of the forest...it is so, sooo beautiful in there. No wonder Mel and Nat wanted to get married there.

That night there was a bushdance held in the Nimmitabel townhall. The band was excellent, there were little kids running around everywhere and delicious home made food being served, it was a great! I get to dance with tall men that I swear nearly catapaulted me flat on the wall. I don't know how the little kids cope...

While the bushdance is still going, I decided to duck out early to the hall’s kitchen to start arranging my flowers. I was a little nervous as I have no idea of what I was trying to do, but I was so fortunate that I had so many friends and strangers to came over to say hi and watch what I was doing. They also offered me help which made everything a lot faster and fun!

I realized as I was doing my flowers, there were about 50 times where I thought my bouquet looked so bad and I have to start again. If I was working by myself, I think I would, but people who saw me or watched me arrange them would sincerely say that it looked nice. Some even asked me if I've had training before because it looked like I knew what I was doing. I'm surprised, but I take it anyway, because I can't go on without those kind words and I can't handle the pressure of Mel not having her wedding bouquet looking great. It made me realize how important encouragement are.

I finished arranging the flowers at 3am and didn’t get to sleep until around 5 am on the floor in the townhall without a mattress… and yes, It was a stupid idea but at least my bouquet is done. My friend Caroline stayed up with me until 3 am. She's so funny she made time flies. I was arranging my flowers in the same room as where the girls were all sleeping, so both of our stomach hurts from trying to hold too much of our laughter.

I'm particularly proud of Melissa's bouquet. The pink lilies look so sweet againts the purple lisianthus. I was a bit worried that the Iris's didn't bloom in time, but I used that as 'spikes' coming out of the bouquet, and the purple clover helped toning it down. I would like another florist come up with this arrangement... I can't imagine anyone else using clovers and closed iris in a wedding bouquet :p

The next day, I woke up at 8 am to the sound of chairs being moved around inside the townhall. Everyone who slept in the room had disappeared. I peeked out of my sleeping bag and there he is again, Mr. helpful and cheerful (aka:John) is happily sweeping the floor away. “It’s Fionna!” like I just popped out of my cocoon or something.

“What? What’s going on? Where’s everyone? What’s with all the noise?!”

“They’re moving the wedding to the townhall. It’s still raining and this morning the wedding venue is covered in a layer of mud.”

“For a split second I thought about the prayers I whispered to God asking Him for a better weather today so that we can have the wedding in that beautiful forest. I was rather disappointed that it wouldn’t go as planned. But since yesterday the venue was covered in a layer of mud and the pizza oven is sufferring from the rain, I guess the townhall will have to do.

So the ceremony and reception happened spontaneously inside the townhall. Not just that, but it also functioned as a bushdance hall, kitchen, dining room, flower arranging table, and a sleeping hall. It feels like a thousand memories are jammed into that one building. Like any good country town, everybody is more than willing to help out. Everything seem to go in place as they move along. All the food are from their contribution and even though it was a buffet style sort of eating, some of the food there are just amazing! Especially the pizza! Unless I go to Italy and have the real deal, I will taste a better pizza. The townhall was packed with 200 or more people in it. That made me realize the fun of not having a 'seated' reception.

One of the wedding's highlight was when Melissa gets to cut Nat’s hair that he’s been growing for awhile. Story is, he made a deal with someone that he won’t cut his hair until he gets married… that was 6 years ago. The crowd got so involved they went mad! They even went all the way and got his head shaved.

The other highlight is… well… they’ve got a cookie monster cake topper.

So there it is, another country wedding. I spoke to yet again so many friendly and helpful strangers. Speaking of helpful, Caroline was amazing that day! She didn't just stayed up till 3 am helping me, she also helped out in the kitchen during the reception while everyone else was busy eating. She also brought cups of tea to people who really need it. She's like a superwoman, I wish I could be as sensitive as her.

I left early to Canberra because I was exhausted, and needed a timeout with Greg. Later I found out that Melissa did a bouquet throw, and guess where it landed? Carolineeeee.... !!!

Ehm... and so... a new adventure had begun for the new Mr and Mrs Walker... and where are they heading? Into the mysterious land fully populated by a 4 legged creature called a 'married couple'- congratulations you two! :D

Henry and Joanne's Wedding

2010-03-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

The second wedding is of my fiance's sister, Joanne Melmoth. She is marrying Henry Halder from Bangladesh. Henry managed to become the talk of the town in tiny West Wyalong- the little country town where Joanne grew up in with a population of around 3.500. It wasn't because Henry is not Australian, but more of because their relationship had been a long fierce battle to finally reach this wedding.

Henry met Joanne when they were both studying to become missionaries. Weeks before Henry had to go back to Bangladesh for good, he got together with Joanne. Anyone would think that this decision is completely mad, but they successfully went through 2 years of long distance relationship and finally got married. Thank You God for Skype.

The Melmoth family is very involved with the community church. Before they were married, Henry had been having a lot of problems in getting his marriage VISA to Australia. They’re wedding was postpone from June 2009 to October 2009 and now it’s finally happening on February 2010. It was a long horrible wait, and the church was praying for Henry for so long! I was there when Greg’s dad announced to the church that Henry’s VISA finally got approved. Everyone instantly applaud, and they've never even met the guy! I love West Wyalong...

They've decided to have the wedding in West Wyalong which is a 3 hour drive North West from Canberra). Greg had the honor to be the driver for Jo and Henry, while I had the honor to do the flower arrangements for the church. Their color theme were red and white. Earlier during the week, Greg and I actually did a one night trip to West Wyalong just so that I can have a second look at the church, vases, also a garden that a lady from church is offering for me to just pick any leaves, berries and flowers that I want.

Back in Canberra, I went straight to the flower wholesaler and bought some giant red roses, red carnations, white alstromeria, white lisianthus, pink and red lilies and pussy willows. In the arrangement I also add a little bit of Australian flowering gum which are intense red in the flower arrangements- and that was a good move because I had a lot of positive comments on them. They looked like they’ve been commercially grown, but really I’ve just picked them off a tree at the side of the road. The flowers had to travel for 3 hours with us, and there were a couple of sharp turns in the car… (which caused a tiny bit of drama and excitement) but they managed to survive.

When arranging, I can't start without drawing a little sketch of what I think they arrangement is going to look like. I did 4 arrangements in the end. 2 for either side of the church, one for the church alter and another one for the welcoming table. O, and a vase full of gum flowers and leaves to decorate the morning tea tables, which is fast and look really good. Joanne's hen's night was held the night before the wedding. Us girls went out to get some chinese, walked around town to get some ice cream and then hang out at some random spot to have a chat. I stayed up late to finish my arrangements afterwards.

I was staying at the Melmoth's house, and the whole time, I was treated as part of the family. I shared a room with Martha, the maid of honor and when I woke up in the morning, it felt special. Today my future sister in law is getting married to my future brother in law. I feel like my own family is expanding even though I’m not married to Greg yet. It was a surprisingly relaxed morning. There were times when we were all just standing around wondering what is there to do. Greg and his younger brother Luke helped me move the flowers to church while the band was rehearsing. When I came back, Greg’s cousin Jess was doing Joanne’s make up at last minutes notice because the original make up artist pulled out. And, maybe I’m over- reacting, but I’m so psyched that I was there to help Joanne and Martha put on their dresses so that I get to be the first one to see them in their dresses and become all smitten at how pretty they look.

I loved the church service, it has a real community feel to it. Our grandma did the prayers and Joannes mum and her sisters did a performance. Being a little country town, a lot of people contributed to the morning tea after the church. Some anonymous people had also cleaned the church, washed some banners to decorate the church and did some minor things that I wouldn't notice if nobody had point it out to me.

A quick family shot after the ceremony:

They had their reception at the local country club. There were round tables but nobody was seated so that everyone can move around and talked to different people. I had so many people come over to talk to me that I barely got off my chair which is unreal. I felt like the shyest person in the room because I couldn’t bring myself up to talk to any strangers! Some people approached me to give me actual cards and gifts because they heard that Greg and I just got engaged. I was so embarrassed because I couldn’t remember half of those people are. A lot of them came to complement me on my flower arrangement, so much that it made me feel like a pro for once!

My favorite moment on the reception was when they had some of their friends performing music in between the meal and speeches and also when Jo and Henry were about to drive away on their honeymoon, the crowd spontaneously started singing . It sound so amazing. It was an incredible night and everyone was happy, which taugt me something. A wedding doesn't have to be expensive to be great. To celebrate love, you just gotta have love... Period.

Darran and Sarah's Wedding

2010-03-02T01:51:00.000-08:00

I arrived to Canberra from Jakarta on a Friday afternoon. Since Canberra dooes’t have an international airport, I had to take the 3 hour bus ride from Sydney airport to Canberra. I’m not sure why I bother, I’m supposed to be attending a wedding the next day back in Sydney.

I probably knew the groom,Darran since the first year I moved to Canberra in 2004, since I was 18. He’s also the reason why I got to know Greg. Back when we were going to the same church in Canberra, Darran was my Bible study leader, and I used to visit his house often- and Greg was living with him, so it was an important wedding for us to go to.

3 years ago Darran escaped Canberra and went to study in Sydney Bible Collage where he met Sarah. And voila, now they’re getting married!

We left Canberra around 9am to be there at 1:30pm ceremony. I had issues trying to stay awake during the trip since Jakarta is 4 hours behind. But our friend Caroline was with us so she gets to entertain Greg while I helplessly kept falling asleep.

Like most modern wedding, the event was very personalized. In the order of service, there’s a footnote every now and then explaining why Darran picked this hymn and why Sarah picked that Bible verse. And when the wedding was over, they walked out of the church to the “Doctor Who” theme song. All my friends were whispering, “I wonder what he did for Sarah to let him play that song.” Turns out that Sarah loves Doctor Who, AND she also loves watching cricket...

After the ceremony we all gathered at the back of the church for afternoon tea while the bride and the groom have their group photos taken. Then me and some of my old friends went a close mall to catch up before we drive down to the reception venue.

The cnewly weds only had their 2 months summer holiday to organize their entire wedding, finding a place to live, and organizing their honeymoon. It’s totally mind-blowing when I think about it. The theme was pink and black (I think) and they had 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsman.

The entire time we had the wedding, everyone was teasing Darran about his personality. It’s an open secret; everyone who had the opportunity to speak in public will mention it. Darran is a very laid back sort of guy, he's always late to everything and very slow in making decisions. He’s also famous for buying things that he will use ‘one day’. That would all be just another boring fact if Sarah’s personality is not the total opposite! She likes to journal the things she did, and lists everything that she needs to do. She’s very organize and always early to class.

And because of this I became inspired how ocean wide of differences can be a match made in Heaven. I have to admit that my relationship with Darran isn’t always smooth. Like all close friendships, we had our conflict but somehow we made it through and stayed friends. Witnessing his marriage made me think about the things I used to be annoyed at him for. Now I realize that I’m so glad that he is the way he is. I thought about some friends in the past where the friendship grew thin and disappeared because of the little things that I couldn’t stand about them. It’s not worth losing a friend over little things, and in the end I think I may find ways to appreciate them the way they are.

So after a wild night of great food, hilarious speeches and fun in torturing tiny innocent gingerbread men and women (the unfortunate bagged treaties on our table), we finally left Sydney at midnight. It was a struggle for Greg to drive home to Canberra, and I tried to stay away by singing along nonsense with our favorite comedy band. We arrived home at 4am Sunday morning… so the next day we skipped church and just sleeeeeeeeeep….

2 worlds

2010-02-22T05:29:00.000-08:00

For the countless times, I arrived back home to Jakarta yesterday.

It’s funny that I’ve flown back and forth from Jakarta to Sydney so many times that it doesn’t feel like an effort anymore. And yet, because these 2 places are so different, it’s always hard to come into realization whenever it’s time to go again. I always feel like I’m living in 2 completely different places. I used think that Jakarta is like London and Australia is like Narnia. Now I think more like Jakarta is earth and Australia is Pandora. You get the idea…. 2 completely different worlds! I had my engagement party the day before I had to fly back to Jakarta. My guests were surprised to find out that I’m going to leave at the very next day after I’m ‘officially’ engaged, leaving my fiancé and all. Greg and his cousin kept saying to me, “Are you REALLY leaving tomorrow?” and for the first time since I went out with Greg, I had to take the bus from Canberra to Sydney airport by myself. This is the 6th time Greg and I had to say goodbye. When I had to say goodbye to him for the first time 2 years ago, it was one of the hardest thing I had to do in my life. And now Greg only dropped me off at the bus station and he didn’t even wait for my bus to leave to waive me goodbye. I don’t know why it’s so easy now for us to be apart now. Maybe because we’ve done it so many times, or maybe it’s because we’re engaged. Whatever it is, I just hope that it’s not because we’re losing our spark.

We’ve set a date for our wedding but I don’t know when I’ll be going back to Australia again. To be married to my fiancé, I had to apply for the prospective marriage visa through the Australian embassy. They said I had to be outside Australia when I send in my application and when the application is granted. The application will take 6-8 months to be processed. So I guess I will have to arrange most of the wedding stuff while I’m in Jakarta. This will get interesting!

Whilst in Australia, I attended 3 weddings in 3 consecutive weekends. From each one Greg and I took ideas from them for our own wedding, and from each one of them I learnt an important lesson. I was too slack and had waaay too much fun in Australia to update my blog so, apologies for not posting my stories in real time, but I will have to post those stories after this one.

So now… back at home. My mum told me that she felt like I went away longer than I really should. One big clue is that my cat Mimi had given up waiting for me and decided to meow outside my mum’s bedroom for attention. I know she misses me. She hadn’t stopped following me around the house since I got back home. Everybody should know that dog’s are man’s best friends but cats are a woman’s best friend. Being away from Greg is a lot easier when Mimi’s around. =)

Back to work tomorrow again though… sigh… let me hear it from you who loves to sit on your bum for 8 hours straight! Definitely NOT for me! -_-;

My Etsy Shop New Look

2010-02-18T05:08:00.001-08:00

I'm on my last couple of days of my stay in Australia now. After attending so many weddings week after week and organising my own wedding, I magically understood the wonderful effect of logo and branding. I realize that most weddings have a colour theme that plays a big part to the 'feeling' of the whole occasion. In my opinion, the more consistent the theme is, the better.

I had a simple vision that my logo is going to be a picture of a girl with swirly hair. At first i started drawing on photoshop using my wacom tablet, but that takes waaay too long to get done so I end up drawing by hand and then scanning it in. It didnt take me long to come up with a picture a girl with swirly hair who is surrounded by round beads. Her face expression and body language is essentially relaxed and at peace, which is imporant to the theme of my shop.

My previous banner was a simple picture I took of a canola farm growing next to the poisonous yet beautiful "Padison's curse". I didn't think much about the shop's colour theme, but because I'm used to seeing the sky blue, purple and yellow from my previous banner, I decided to keep those colours in my new banner. I also decided to use the same font of writing.

It took me 2 days to design and finish making the banner and print out new name cards. I guess my lack of knowledge in digital art technique affects the amount of time for me to get things done, but it all adds up to an experience so I have no regrets. Plus I really enjoy doing this! My name cards look like this now:

Besides pencil drawing, I use adobe photshop, illustrator and a little bit of paint.net to get this done. I have never ever taken any photshop classes, so I google all my questions when I get stuck- which chews up a lot of time. If that didn't work, I tend to reach out to my super helpful IT fiance who knows nothing about photoshop yet always comes back to me with a solution.

... oh man, all this effort! I am quite please with the result though! It's feels soooo good to have a shop identity! Yay, finally...!!! XD

Waking Up to 2010

2010-01-02T20:08:00.001-08:00

I’ve been ill for almost 10 days now. I’ve been suffering diseases after diseases and now I’m on my second round of anti-biotic. They’re simple illnesses really, but at one point I forced myself to go to the gym even though I felt horrible. For some reason I thought it’ll make me feel better if I go. The next day at 3am I woke up with a fever, and for the whole day my body couldn’t replace the muscle tissues I broke the day before so I couldn’t move any muscle- except my fingers. My mind is conscious but my body is not functioning. I even thought, “Maybe this is what’s dying like”

And of course, when you’re sick your body doesn’t think of much else to do except trying to get well. And so for a moment, I'm living my life the way I always wanted to live: the laziest way- roaming around this world with a damp mind like a zombie.

Though, yesterday night, I must’ve felt better or something and suddenly my mind decides to start functioning properly again. While Greg was playing some silly addictive game in my room, I found myself staring into the distance saying,

“We’re getting married Greg…”
He just smirked. “Yea, it’s a bit like that isn’t it?”- as in, it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening yet.
“Yeah… we should do something about that…”

After we announced our engagement on facebook, every man and his dog is asking us if we’ve set a date, and we still haven’t start planning anything.

After that my brain decides to run with it and spill absolutely EVERYTHING that I have to do: my Etsy shop, my trip to Semarang, my trip to Australia, my wedding preparation, other people wedding preparations, my job, my private projects, my money…! Then I realize what a blessing it is to be sick and to just be oblivious to these things for awhile. In the past 2 months I have been having trouble sleeping just because my brain won’t hold back.

It’s also really good to wake up to 2010 now. I usually have a New Year’s resolution before the New Year, but this time, I almost completely missed New Year cause I didn’t realize what date it was… and for some reason, so did Greg.

Getting Hitched

2010-01-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

I am now engaged. My boyfriend Greg asked me to marry him on a hill looking out to the Kintamani mountain in Bali on boxing day.

I think this story is more interesting to be told on his perspective since he did all the work, all I did was wait. I knew he’s going to ask me, but I didn’t know when he’s going to do it or how. He asked my parents permission to marry him on the 24th. It was a bit strange for my parents because back in their day, they didn’t have to get engaged to get married. So when Greg asked my parents permission, my dad thinks that Greg is talking about the wedding,

“When are you thinking of having it?”
“I don’t know, maybe tonight, tomorrow, or the next day.” – so I guess with that sort of answer my dad had figured that he’s talking about something else other than the wedding.
And my mum… hehe… my mum…. She didn’t say anything, but as Greg about to leave the room she said, “Fionna, Fionna, Fionna… Fionna needs to exercise more”- as in... to get fit and skinny for the wedding day.
Anyway, they get it in the end and gave him the permission.

Greg doesn’t have a clue of where he’s going to be for the proposal and because of that his proposal plan is relying on the Christmas present he’s going to give me. The plan is that, I’ll open the present with the question inside it, and when I look back at him he’ll be on his knee with the ring. Rough plan but Ok, it’s good enough for Greg.

The 24th of December arrived, and where are we? We are in my parent’s friend’s Villa in a place called Penyabangan half an hour away from Ubud… practically in the middle of nowhere. Greg’s challenge is to find a nice place to go to in order to give me his ‘Christmas present’. The Villa is an amazing building that looks out to an amazing view of valleys and mountains, but Greg didn’t want to propose in front of everyone so he still need to find a nice place to open the present.

I got sick on Christmas day so I just stayed in bed with a book. I was wondering why Greg kept bugging me, “Let’s go out somewhere, let’s go, let’s go!”. We finally did, but it was already dark by the time we went.

So boxing day is Greg’s last shot, I mean… I haven’t got my Christmas present yet! I was suffering a bit of a Bali belly so I was reluctant to get out, and Greg is stressing out that my illness may well ruin his plan.

We were on our way out to explore the surrounding area with the rental motorbike. We planned together to bring our Christmas presents with us to open. On the way out, I was shaking his present and asked, “Is my ring in there?”
He just said a straight, “No!”
“Oh good… cause if it is I’ll get a bit nervous!”

We started driving South. We drove and drove and found nothing (except that deer in the middle of the road there). At one point I asked again, “Can I open my present now?” Greg was reluctant because the view was not good enough so I let him put it off again. My stomach was feeling bad a couple of times and I kept on asking him if we can drive back home and open the present there. We almost did, but suddenly I felt better and so we started driving up north. We knew that Kintamani mountain is only 20minutes up North, plus we have a map, so we’re safe to go.

Sure enough, we got up there and the view was AMAZING…!!! Though, you know… it’s Bali, so there’s no way we can stop and park at somewhere descent without being approached by people trying to sell us stuff, so we stopped at the side of the road.

Anywaaay… present time…!!!

Looking out at the amazing view of the volcano and the lake in front of us, I opened my present. It was a box, and inside it sits a stem of red rose made out of origami. On the petal of the rose, it said, “Fionna, will you marry me?”. It even has the Indonesian version on the other side saying, “Apa kamu mau menikah dengan saya?”

I was so surprised that I started jumping around and make stupid girly noises like I always do when I get excited. And Greg, who was so keen to see my reaction got distracted and just stared at me that when I looked at him, he’s just still sitting there on the motorbike. I wasn’t 100% sure if that was ‘it’ cause he's just sitting there looking at me. So I said, “Is this it?” He just nodd at me with the maddest smile and I was like, “Where’s the ring?” “Oh, it’s in my pocket!” He got the ring out and it was a single diamond in a simple solitaire white gold band. Of course I love it! I never dreamed of owning a diamond ring, and the thought of being married to Greg is just so HUGE it’s overwhelming, but we’re both are very happy and excited.

Though… ppl still manage to try selling us ‘stuff’ while we’re there, they were like, “honeymoon artwork, this is story of Rama and Sinta… bla, bla, bla…” over and over again. I got so mad I yelled at one guy, “Oh my god! Will you leave us aloooone…!!!” and that scared him off completely.

Driving back down the hill, Greg told me about how he got the ring and how he made the rose, I was very impressed with his work and initiative. He said that the ring was the most expensive thing that he ever bought in his life, and it’s worth it! Oh man, I feel SO loved it's almost unreal! =)

Arriving at the villa, I ran to my parents and told them, “I’m engaged!”. They don’t really know what’s going on, but they were very happy nevertheless. My dad gave me a really big hug and he was like, “So… where’s Greg ring? Are you going to give him one too?”
“No dad, they guy gets the ring for the engagement, and the girl just has to wait… patiently!” =)

My First Jewelry Wedding Gig

2009-12-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

I was SO fortunate this year that my awesome friend, Sienna had recommend me to do a bridal jewelry for her sister, Garmisch who is now happily married to her husband, Tim in Australia last month.

It was my first bridal request so it was VERY exciting and lots of new experiences had been learnt. Since I’m currently living in Jakarta, Garmisch and I communicate a lot via emails. She’s the best client anyone would ever want really. She sent me so many helpful pictures of what she wants that when I finally did come up with some jewelry, no further alteration was needed. When trying to come up what sort of jewelry I'm going to make, color theme is my no.1 concern. The design, and all the rest comes second. I asked about her flowers and what the bridesmaids are wearing. In this case, Garmisch is wearing white, and her flowers and bridesmaids are going to be yellow.

This is one of the picture Garmisch had sent me of the Bridesmaids dress to let me have an idea about what sort of 'yellow' is in her colour theme.

When I went to Australia for holiday, I used this opportunity to discuss the details with her in person. I also took measurement of her, and her bridesmaids wrists to get their bracelets properly fitted. We meet up in the city’s café and she even brought her dress over!!!

These are the final result of the jewelry:

For the bridesmaids, I use predominantly peach rice pearls to match their dresses.

Fo Garmisch, she requested a chandelier style earrings and a matching 3 layered bracelet. After looking at many photos and conversations, this is what we came up with:

A few weeks ago, Sienna sent me a link on to the photos from the wedding. These amazing photos are taken by Tate Needham on the courtesy of t8photography (www.t8photography.com) So amazing in fact I'm considering him to do photos for my own wedding now. So, If you're getting married in Canberra, he's your man! ;)

This is a photo of Sienna wearring the peach earrings.

Misch looking absolutely stunning in her dress, flowers and the jewelry.

I’m not there at the wedding, but seeing my jewelry had made it there in those photos made me feel like a piece of me had been there at there, especially when I saw this photo here:

A big congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs. Riley! And thanks Sienna and Garmisch for your friendship and support! You guys rock my world…!!!

………………………………......................................................................................................

A couple of weeks later I was approached by another customer, Carrie from Ohio, USA. She requested to make 3 sets of necklace/earrings set for her bridesmaids. Her wedding is in May. She loved a necklace I had made, but wanted the colors to be predominantly black, red, pink and

white.

Then there’s a hiccup, my supplier had run out of those oval hoops, so I had to buy hoops that are larger. After experimenting with it a couple of times the result wasn’t very good.

So I went back to the shop and looked around for other alternatives. I found round hoops that I quite like, so I made these Christmas necklace to test it out:

It was really cool because Carrie ended up liking this one better than the original oval hoops! Yay for both of us! But there’s another challenge. Carrie requested that I use non- iridescent swarovski crystals rather than the iridescent ones that I use. So I rang up all my suppliers, and none of them supply a 6mm round non-iridescent crystals. I found that rather irritating because personally, I also prefer non-iridescent crystals, and I think they used to have it. They also stop ruby colored crystals coming in… and I like to use a lot of ruby. That’s the downside of the bead market in Jakarta. They like to stop supplying whatever that doesn’t sell without any warning.

I happened to be very lucky this time because I had to go to Singapore to attend a 3 day conference. I have a bead shop over there that I normally go to, so I bought the non-iridescent crystals over there.

So this is the final outcome! Carrie said that it looked exactly as she imagined, and that made us both very VERY happy! Yaaay! =D

Looking back at this project, it did take a long time for us to work this pieces of jewelry out, and there are times when I feel that the nature of my suppliers are very unstable that I’m going to hit a dead end several times. But God has been extremely good to me. With a lot of faith, it’s just so amazing to see how it all just work out by itself in the end.

Thanks Carrie for your patience and trusting me with this project! I really appreciate it. I also can’t wait to see the photos in May of course! =)

Finally thanks to Etsy for making it possible for me to work with people from around the world. I absolutely LOVE it…!

Identity

2009-12-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

Many weeks ago now, I met up with one of my jewelry customer as a face to face delivery. I went through a lot of problems trying to meet her at the Four Seasons Hotel- I had to go a couple of hours early, take several detours, got lost, even ran out of mobile credit at the same time. I think I was especially unlucky that morning. But it was actually worth the visit after all.

Her name is Betty. She looks like she’s much older than my mum but younger than my grandmother. She works for citibank in Singapore, my dad is her client- she saw my jewelry when I advertised it on facebook. We ended up talking for awhile, and I found her one of the most amazing woman I’ve ever met! But this blog entry is not about Betty. It’s about one of my favorite topic to wrestle with in my head: identity.

Let me build up to that now.

When I finished high school and on my way to go to the music school, Monique DiMattina, my former jazz piano teacher sent me an sms,

“Whatever you do, be yourself.”

I respect and adore Monique, and I knew that as an artist, she knows exactly what she’s talking about. I constantly kept her words at the back of my mind. But at that time I also know that even though it sounds easy, I wouldn’t understand fully what she says.

Sure enough, I faced the world, struggle through uni dodging criticism, trying to please my lectures to get the grades. My identity had been put through a very rough test. University made me come to a short conclusion: It’s very hard to be yourself, so hard that it’s almost not worth it…- until I met Betty.

I’m not really sure what we were talking about to come to this topic, but she happened to say, “It’s very easy to be yourself.” And of course I snapped, “No it isn’t! It’s very hard!” Then she said, “Being yourself is the easiest thing to do. Not being yourself is much harder.” I fell silent. I thought that my struggles all this time had proven a point, but it hasn’t. This journey is not over yet.

“If you do what you don’t want, you will be unhappy, and whatever the result is in the end, you will not be satisfied. If you do what you want and be yourself, it is much easier to do, and you will be satisfied in the end.”

“But it’s not easy!”

“Yes it is! It's the easiest thing to do! But you must remember that when you be yourself, people will dislike you.”

I immediately thought, “She’s completely right!”. I don’t have problem with being myself, I let peoples criticism hurt me, have effect on me, let them shaped me in the way I don’t want to and it makes things very confusing and hard. I like the way she was not hesitant about it. It’s not “People might, they may or may not dislike you.” She says, “People WILL dislike you”. It’s inescapable…, but happiness is at the brim of the horizon.

And then something happen at work.

I was designing a picture to go on mugs, and it took me a lot of effort because I’m still trying to get familiar to photoshop and in using my wacom. When they're done my boss immdediately offered them to our customers, but none of them wanted it. So I got a bit upset thinking that my effort is now wasted.

My boss was so nice to me that she tried to cheer me up by telling me that my design is not ugly, it’s just that sometimes it's hard to know what the market is like. “You know, there’s this design, it’s so ugly and I hate it. I don’t even want to make sample for it because I don’t want to be responsible for it if it doesn’t sell. But they liked it and we had a lot of repeat order for it. Even export wanted it!”

I feel rather hopeless and bewildered. For awhile I find myself thinking of how ugly can I possibly let myself draw for the mugs to be able to sell.

I also learnt other exceptions when selling in local Indonesian market:

-Don’t use too much purple because it’s symbol for widows.
-Don’t use too much yellow because it’s the colour of death.
-Make sure that the design is very colourful no matter what
-Don’t draw dogs because they are considered unclean.

That night at dinner time, I was complaining about this situation to my parents. My dad says, “Well… you know the story, if you’re trying to catch fish, you can’t use a bait that you like… like donuts. You have to feed them worms, even if you don’t like worms.”

But … but … but… why would I wanna catch fish if I’ve already got my donut?

Gettin into Wire!

2009-11-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my beading desk, as a result of an excessive amount bead shopping. I feel rather motivated to get all the money I spent back. I mean, it is almost Christmas, and I have to be prepared in expecting the best out of my sales. Plus my ideas had been flying around everywhere ever since I got more familiar with wire.

I’ve managed to get a few rolls of artistic wire during my last trip to Aus. For Au$9 per roll they are very dear, but the colours are so great I can’t just stick with the usual silver or gold. I got like, 10 rolls of different colours and different gauge, and at that stage, I’ve never even coiled a wire in my life. Now I’m glad I got that many wires because they’re running out very fast.

Summer is approaching in Australia, and my friends had been out (even in the midst of their essays and exams) flying kites, swimming in the lake, going for barbecue picnics, late night games, movies and such. Being alone in Jakarta makes me miss them even more knowing that they’re having fun. Though, like Proverbs said, there is a time for everything. I’ve had my 3 weeks of fun when I visit them, and it’s time to sit on my bum and try to earn some again. I can’t complain, cause making things with wire is a lot of fun too.

If I was living in Australia, I’d be too tempted to go out fly a kite, swim in the lake and stay up with friends instead of staying at home making jewelry. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why I didn’t do so well in uni. Uni was driven entirely by pressure, I'm not fased so much about what I'm going to do when I grow up so I'd much rather be out playing around. I have to admit, I’ve done some pretty stupid pointless things (for some reason having a race of rolling down commonwealth hill comes to mind). In a way I think I did the right thing, I knew those days weren’t going to last forever.

Here's a photo from 2006, taken right before we decide it'll be a good idea to race rolling down the hill... aaah memories...!

This time around, tempted or not, I’d rather be spending time at home, being in touch with my creative senses, interacting with my ideas.

It started out with a bunch of failed experiment…

I figured that it was silly to experiment on expensive wires, so I did a couple of sketches to plan ahead and use cheaper wire to make sure the idea worked. (yes I use my keyboard as a bench... I just don't have that much space in my room for all my stuff. I don't think my keyboard is very impressed with me right now.)

And then doing whatever it takes to make those sketches work.

I wrote a sign in front of me on the mirror that says, “Clean up mess after each session” in bright red. But it’s not working, only sometimes when I’m out of ideas and getting a little bored, but a the moment, there’s wires flying everywhere!

And so, voila!
(All these can be found in my Etsy shop of course!)

I’m drawn in, I’m immersed… I think I’m addicted.

The 'Artist' Within

2009-10-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I have discovered recently that I am, naturally, a very lazy person. It’s probably very obvious, but it’s never too late to find out these things. If I had my choice, I could be ultra lazy and ultra can’t be bothered trying new stuff, going to new places or meeting new people. So the question is, what makes me want to do stuff?

Here’s the story…

A couple of days ago I was super duper cranky at work. What happen was that, while I was away on holiday, someone had taken my artwork and modified them without my permission to sell. It’s wrong, but I shouldn’t complain because we are working in the same company, and if the company makes money then who cares what we sell. It’s all about what the customers want right?

I DON’T THINK SO…!!!

I think this whole grabbing my artwork without my permission is a lot of crap. I’m so angry how everyone these days just treat artwork like it just fell out of the sky or something! We artist have to have the talents, the vision, the idea! We have to read, research, dream, go through trial and error process, be in the mood to come up with these things, and then some thoughtless, heartless people out there just take them like art is just something that comes from a mass production factory somewhere. Cheap!

Anyway, I don't really mean to go on about that.

That situation brought me to the next natural progress of spilling to my boyfriend over skype after work. As he was trying his best to respond accordingly ( which he’s getting better at by the way) he said, “Well… obviously there’s this little artist inside you that’s trying to get out”

The title ‘little artist’ just kindda stuck with me. Suddenly it made me see little creative fairies living in me.

I never really see myself as an ‘artist’ until early on this year. I went through some really tough times last year and as I was trying to find ways to make my life easier. So yes, basically I was having an identity crisis at 23. What I decided to do was to go to my parents holiday house, by myself, in the mountains with a book my aunt gave me about self-discovery. For 3 days I was evaluating myself and the situation I'm in and figuring out why I was so miserable.

I came out of the 3 days more confident than ever knowing for sure that I am an artist- not because of what I’ve done, but because I’ve been born that way. Some people may have issues with me believing that. Some people think that you can’t be born an artist, you have to earn it. Maybe it’s true for some people, but for other people that I’ve met and know, they just are.

So, about the little baby fairies… they have always been there, and they’re keeping me going. If I don’t respect my art, express myself in music, create things using my sight, hands, my voice, hearing, they will start to cry. And if they cry, it really hurts.

Ok, so it may sound like my being is divided into a couple of different void, but that’s exactly what keeps me going. I don’t want to be drawing, or singing all the time, 16 hours a day. I’m not some crazy art maniac and I still want to live it up a bit, but if I don’t do art, something within me is starved and I could literally go crazy. This could be one of the reason why art can be depreciated. Some people survive on art like we survive on food. Honest and true artists would keep making art even if they don't get a commission or ever be rich.

That's the same little faeries inside them playing in...

Wedding Bells in February

2009-10-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

By this December, Greg and I would have been going out for 3 years, which is for us, is an Ok amount of time for not being engaged yet. But apparently, 3 years of waiting is a little bit too long for most of our friends.

It’s only October, but it looks like my Calendar is already full for next year’s February. All these wedding dates are flying at me only in the past couple of weeks, and they all happen to land on February.

Greg’s sister, Joanne is getting married to Henry on the 6th of February. They had been going out for 3 years and the relationship has been striving through a painful long distance since Henry lives, and is from Bangladesh. They met at Bible school in Australia. They’ve been trying to get married for awhile but Henry has been having problems in applying for a VISA to get in the country to get married. Their July 09 wedding is delayed till February 2010.

Our friend Nick is getting married to Anita on that same day. That's a photo of Nick there, the only one I have of himself.... Actually, I don’t really know this couple. I’ve seen Anita around at church years ago but never really had a proper conversation. I don’t even know Nick. When I recently came to Canberra for a visit, Nick randomly appeared to crash my lemon dinner party. It was rather surprising since we don’t even know each other but now I guess I’m entitled to go to his wedding if I wanted to. I think it’s only been a year since they’ve been going out.

This Tuesday at work, what I thought is going to be a boring morning turns out to be quite an eventful one. I checked my Etsy account finding a sale from Melissa’s boyfriend, Nat. He left me a message there saying, “Are you going to be around next year’s February? Wedding bells might be just around the corner!”

I… was… ecstatic!!!

My quiet American friend Melissa had only met Nat a couple of months ago. Mel spent half her life on the computer so it’s nor surprising to hear that they had met through facebook. They finally met in person a couple of months later to find that they couldn’t stay away from each other.

When we met Nat, we immediately thought that he looks, talks, and thinks exactly like Mel. I thought this is kindda creepy, because I always thought that Mel is very unique, but at the same time, this is really cool stuff! I told my German friend, David about this via skype. His response was,

“So… Mel is getting married to herself?”- as if he wasn’t sure of what I just said or something.

“Well... more like the male version of herself.”

The couple is flying over to Boston this November to meet Mel’s parents, and if it all goes smoothly, then just like Nat said, there’ll be an extra wedding bells ringing by February. If they do get married by then, that means they had been going through the whole 3 process of going out, getting engaged and getting married within 9 months.

Half an hour later, I got an email from my friend Sally who is currently living in London with her boyfriend. “Good news! We’re engaged!”

…And apparently that’s not enough ‘good news’ for the week.

Today Greg sent me an sms saying, “I have good news! You better ring me back!” but then I never did cause my phone died and I never get that message. 4 hours later when I turn on my phone and did find out that there is a good news, Greg said to me, “Actually, I can’t tell you about it now cause they rang me back saying that they wanted to let you know themselves.”

…I think I nearly died with curiosity. My imagination ranges from my best friend Lyndell is pregnant to my friend Caroline (who is happily single) is going out with Greg’s cousin (which is just impossible really). It was really killing me! I had to ring Greg and begged him to tell me who's the person involved in this 'good news'. I think Greg took pity on me and have kindly rang the mysterious person and ask them if he can just break the news to me. But instead, they just went, "It's killing her? Good! Tell her we'll ring her on skype by 9pm, otherwise you can tell her"

Gaaargh!

I finally got a call from Skype… slightly past 9pm though. It turns out to be none of all of my guesses. It was one of my really good mate, Fizz who’s been living in Sydney. He is now engaged to his girlfriend, Sarah. He knew me well enough to know he’d get a mad reaction out of me when he break the news. I found myself taking deep breaths and yelled at him over and over again for keeping me in a torturous suspense, “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!!!”

And guess what? They are getting married at the end of January or February.

So now, I am freaking out. How the hell am I going to get back to Australia this February?!?!?!

And by the way, later in the evening Greg said to me, “Maybe we should get married in February… it seems to be the way to go!”

The Cats Who Own Me

2009-10-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

I’m starting to find things that I can appreciate out of living in a slightly chaotic place like Jakarta. As far as I know of, we have zero urban animal control. We have lots of strayed cats and dogs running around everywhere. A couple of years ago in Singapore, they had mass killings of strayed cats. They would chipped the ears of the cats that they don't kill to mark them. In New Zealand it’s very important to track all cats in the country to protect their birds. In Australia, they had mass killings of kangaroos because there are too many of them around. Recently they’ve decided that it’s a good idea to eat them. So now Australians can buy kangaroo meat in their supermarkets. Subsequently kangaroo meat is cheaper, and a good substitute for beef.

While it’s very hard to buy or keep a pet in modern countries, it’s very easy to adopt one here if you’re not fuss on what type of cats and dogs you want. You just pick them off a street... that’s how my family got our cats.

It started out when my little brother Vincent came home with a mommy cat from school that just gave birth to 2 little kittens. When the kittens no longer need their mum, we kept the kittens but return the mum to the school.

Vincent had named these cats, but I never knew what they are. I naturally call the guy cat “Fatty” cause he’s got a small head but has a fat belly that made him look so disproportionate. I named the girl cat Mimi as she is a very self-centered cat. She always meow’s “Me, me, me, me…” and looked at me like she needs something. But really, she just wants to get into my room and hi-jacked my bed. Then one day, mum decided to take the cats to the doctor to get them sterilized. The doc asked her what the cat’s names are for documentation purposes. Surely enough, she had no clue what they are, so she made them up on the spot…. And that’s how our cats ended up with 3 sets of different names.

A couple of months later, as I was going for a morning stroll in a tea plantation with Simon and Daniel, a little boy kitten approached us. That kitten followed us for the whole walk as loyal as a dog. The walk wasn't easy, it was very hilly and rocky. When we nearly reached the end, he lied down and stopped following us. We didn’t have the heart to leave him there as he looked very tired and hungry… so we took him. After watching Ice Age 3 the night before, we christened the cat as ‘Rudy’, and unlike the other cats, his name remained consistent thus far.

I’m enjoying the ups and downs of keeping these cats, but I'm especially close to Mimi. Maybe it's because she's a girl. She is a really good companion for me when I get sick or lonely. She’ll sit quietly on my lap as I’m beading or working on the computer. She’ll even sit next to me and put her paws on my shoulder when I’m sick in bed. She likes to meow outside my room and sit there till I open the door just to get a pat... or to hijack my bed. As you can see on the photos, she could REALLY get comfortable in my bed! I'm starting to get used to it, besides, I get to take all of these really funny photos. And the best thing is, even if they do wake up because of your flash or whatever, they just look at you, yawned, stretch a bit, and just go back to sleep peacefully, unaware of the evil things you are plotting behind their back....

When I first decided to adopt Rudy... he was never meant to live with us for a long time. I didn't know how we can keep another cat in the house. Though, over time I think he had stole my mum's heart, especially when my niece who is only a couple months old loves playing with him. During the holidays when all of us weren't around, he must've got bored and he disappeared for days. My mum got panicked and got everyone around the neighbourhood to look for him. We finally found him in a neighbour's house with another cat.

I also enjoy watching little thrills that these cats do to keep me amused around the house. Like this photo! Today was an especially hot day. As I opened the fridge for an orange juice, Rudy jumped in and made himself fully comfortable inside the fridge. Instead of immediately taking him out of the fridge, I ran to my room and grabbed a camera to take this photo. I just hope that my parents won't see this... :p

So yes... the joy of living in a country with no complex pet order is getting a free pet. My x housemate Melissa looooooooves cats. I think she's almost famous for it. But unfortunately, most rental properties won't allow pets. When she found out that I have 3 cats at home through facebook, I think she was very jealous! All I have to say to her is, "Come and live in Indonesia! You can have 10 cats for free if you want!"

I reckon this can be a selling point in a 'Come and live in Indonesia' brochure... if there is any....

Money, money, money

2009-10-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

I’m so broke at the moment… and as much as I hate being broke, I think I deserve it. If I count my blessings and really think about how much I have and done with the money, all the travelling that I did, I should be glad that I’m broke. I don’t think I have enough room if I ever plan to play around!

I got myself a new gadget yesterday. It’s a small Wacom intuos 4. I couldn’t afford to pay for it so dad helped me. He wants me to have it anyway and it’s part of the deal that if I pay him the huge amount of sum that I borrowed of him, he’ll help me pay for the wacom. I’ve owed him a lot of money since June. I borrowed the money to pay my travels around Indonesia with Simon and Daniel, then ticket and VISA to go to Australia. I calculated it tonight and it totaled to US$1700. I gasp, thinking that it’s $200 more than I thought it was… leaving me with only $200 in the bank… plus I need to pay $60 for the beads I just ordered. Being a part time Indonesian worker, I really don’t get too much. I have to say that at times like this, I’m just glad that I’m living under my parents wing… and I’m not ashamed of it!

Though, I feel like I just got hit in the head and I’m starting to think of ways to get out of this… better get cracking with my jewelry then!

Addicted to Glass

2009-10-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have a very specific urge to go learn glass bead making during my stay in Canberra. I don’t even know what is involved, how much it cost, or even if they offer a class, but I didn't think much of it. One day I found a class over searching in google and emailing people, so off I went! (and yes, I’m pretty impulsive to new ideas that comes to my head. 2 years before this, it was floristry, a year before this, opening a shop on Etsy, and now, this....)

My teacher is Mrs. Carole Griffith, and since we came in contact via email, I never really knew what she looked like before the class. While Greg was driving me to my first lesson, we tried to imagine what Carole would looke like. Originally I thought she’d be in her thirties with long black hair, rather gothic and mysterious.

Carole came a bit late... and oddly enough she didn’t look like anything I imagined. Medium height, red curly hair, chirpy, happy, and a little bit crazy. She told us she just came back from a medical appointment. They told her that she had to quit coffee, which is poison to her system. Have I told you that she’s a little crazy? I mean it in a very good way though.

Carole is a great teacher and very good in keeping an eye with beginners like me. She watches me like a hawk, even when she’s talking to other students, she would make a glance or two at me to make sure I’m alright. That made me feel secure with my beads, and playing with this torch in front of me that is blowing at 2000 degrees. I find looking at molten hot glass, observing patiently and slowly shaping itself into it’s most comfortable shape (round) is very mezmerizing and super relaxing. There’s something very peaceful in letting gravity slowly doing it’s work to perfecting this object in the flame. I met a lot of other students who’d take lessons as a relaxation or recreational thing, even a treat for their birthdays! I took 6 classes and had met two people who said that there’s nothing else they’d rather do in their birthday.

(Carole's treasured glass supply that we can freely use! :D )

For the first lesson, Carole just got me to make normal beads over and over again... and I was ecstatic! When Greg picked me up after class to go for lunch, my brain was on a roll. I got really jumpy and happy and won’t stop talking to him about what I learnt, and telling him what Carole is like. It feels like I just met the guy of my dreams, and I’m stupidly head over heels in love!!! Except it’s not with a person, it’s with glass.

I took 6 lessons in total during my stay and out of that 6 lessons, I only made a couple of beads that I can actually use. Most of them are random beads, and lots of complete stuff ups which breaks my heart everytime I look at them. I learnt how to draw dots, raised dote, flowers, putting air bubble inside the bead, making multiple colour bead, make lentil beads, shaping beads, making stringers and drawing with the stringers.

I was the only student on my last lesson, and I had a great time with Carole. There's this really nice guy next door who's a violin maker. I see him almost every class for coffee breaks and he always order a small flat white. Carole was getting upset for not being able to drink coffee or chocolate, and this guy said to her, "Carole, why don't you just except the fact that you can't drink coffee, and embrace drinking tea instead!" His words must hit her straight in the head because 2 days later, she came into class with a couple of grams of the most expensive tea in the world, glass teacup, tea heater, and around 500 tea lights because it's cheaper in bulk. Being a tea lover, I thought I was in heaven. We were sipping hot tea out of this funky mug that's made by some madman in between making beads.

Aaah... this is life, how can anything be any better than this?

Now that it’s all over, I really miss, and crave to make more beads. I’m just sad that they cost a lot to set up, and I have no idea how I would supply the materials to make these beads, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll work it out sooner than later.

Jewelry photoshoot session for Etsy, in Canberra

2009-10-10T09:57:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to make the most out of my time here in Canberra, and getting a jewelry photoshoot was one of those attempt.

The original plan was to take photos outdoor in the beautiful Canberra landscape as the background. Fresh green spring grass on the hills and clear blue sky. Not just that, but I wanted to have 3 models with 3 different skin tones and getting them to change their costumes that fits my jewellry... basically try doing whatever I can't do at home.

As it turns out... things aren’t as simple and romantic as my head makes it to be. I didn’t know that I was asking pretty much the impossible until my friend/photographer Ben said, “Ok... we’ll try to keep aiming high now...”

As he said that, the 5 of us (me, 3 of my girl friends as models and Ben) were standing in this patch of grass next to our flat freezing our head off trying to take photos out door. It was super windy... and it’s 6’C outside. There goes my plan...

There’s a lot of things that I wish could be done better. First, the weather. I should’ve hired someone to chase the wind away.

It has been forcasted to rain days before and no matter how many times I’ve prayed, it looks like it’s meant to be cold, windy and raining... but at least we are allowed small dosages of sun. It’s been 20 plus degrees in the past couple of weeks in Canberra, but then it decided to drop down to 6 degrees on the Saturday, with an occasional drizzling rain and horrible wind blowing Bens prop away while we’re trying to take photos. Plus, because the wind is blowing very hard, the clouds are moving very fast which change the lighting very quickly. So Ben would instruct us, "Hold the prop, take it out, put it back on, take it out..." - something like that...

Second, timing. I wanted the girls to be sorted out before Ben arrived. I slept in and woke up 15 minutes before the time I said for everyone to meet up. Melissa is an American and she lives with me so I had no problem with that. Prabha, the Indian-Singaporean arrived half an hour late with her boyfriend Brendan. And since she’s in the middle of doing her PHD thesis, she got her laptop with her to check on her experiment simulations when I needed her to get change. Sienna is a Phillipino who lives outside of town and she was feeling quite ill the night before so I didn’t expect her to come, but she came anyway, although she was an hour late. So... when Ben rocks up, the girls aren’t ready and I panicked. I didn’t realize how much stuff I had to do either. I had to allocate who’s going to wear what jewellry, with what dress. I had to put make up on some of them and also directing the photoshoot itself.

So, note to self: the more organised you are, the better... and I guess that rule can apply to most things that I do.

The weather was so horrible but we tried to push for it anyway... 20 minutes later, we came back inside. Ben helped me decide to take photos on the verandah cause there’s not enough light inside the flat and it’s too cold to be outside. So, there goes my romantic outdoor photo session. But Ben was right, we started to get a lot of results in the verandah. I’ve learnt that it’s either you change your costumes or you change your venue a lot. Originally, I wanted us to go out for a walk around the area and find nice background to take photos against, but thats not going to work because the girls need to get change in between shots. So it's easier to stick to one venue in this case.

I love the tiny camera remote thing that Ben's holding. What an awesome gadget to have!

Now this is the bit where I write about how thankful I am to my friends who are willing to stand in the cold, letting me take photos of them, torturing them just to take some photos for my Etsy shop. I guess I went a little too overboard. But I couldn’t say that I didn’t do this without laughter. The flat became full of people going in and out. Our boyfriends were there making us girls laugh and smile and not shiver as much when the wind suddenly came gushing down. My friend Caroline is making us tea and amazing mini lemon meringue cupcakes keeping us full and warm. Oh, I really love these moments. Ben is angel sent really.... unlike me, he came very prepared. He even bought a new prop to experiment with during my photoshoot. He has an eye for detail and lighting that I definitely don’t have. I also like him because he has and always been so full of wisdom I dare not disobey his commands and suggestion- which helps a lot because I’m often very indecisive.

Taking photos is always something that I never look forward to when it comes into listing items in Etsy, so whoever thought that I would be working this hard in taking photos that is probably not worth the money the jewellry is worth. Ben said to me, “Do you love it though?” The indecisive me for once answered a very confident “Yes! Ofcourse!”

Well, At least I don’t have to take the photos so I’m not sure what I was answering yes to... Probably organizing this whole thing.... Getting stuff done and allocating people to do jobs that I can’t do. it’s a lot of fun, good experience and brings people together. I love my friends, and being around them makes me happy.

... and thanks Mel for all the great shots in documenting this photoshoot. You're awesome!

Back home

2009-10-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

27 Sept 09... around 2am

I’m currently on a vacation in Canberra right now. I’ve been here for 2 weeks and I’ve got another week to go. I don’t feel like I’m on a holiday, it feels more like being back home. I haven’t been back here for a year, which means that I haven’t seen a lot of my friends for a year and have been apart from my boyfriend Greg for 9 months. It’s insane to think that we’re still together really.... I almost forgot what he looks like 3D.

The first couple of days here I felt so incredibly happy it’s almost ridiculous. I’m so excited about every little thing that I’m doing and getting to know what my friends had been up to. There are times when I couldn’t stop smiling, talking and laughing like an idiot until my friends think that I was drunk. I pity them for not having experienced extreme happiness :p. There’s a lot in Canberra that I’ve missed while being in Jakarta. A lot of them are simple things that I’ve never noticed when I was living here for 4 years. I love it how everything in here is so systematic. I love it that when I go grocery shopping, I don’t have to decide if I want to buy ‘import’ or ‘local’ of the same type of vegetable. I love how Australians are actually proud of their Australian 'made' or 'owned' products. I love the fact that the mall is not the only place to go shopping, and just being able to look up to a clear, clean blue sky for a change makes me feel very happy.

I’ve done a lot of things in the past 2 weeks that I thought, “I have to come back and do this again soon” like, catching up with certain people more than once, having fancy dinner with my boyfriend, go to that market, this bead shop or book store more than twice, watch movies... but of course it’s not as if I'm going to fit them all in in the my last week here. I'll just have to come back again... and God knows when that will be!

I felt that even in this midst of happiness, I can’t really grasp this feeling because I know it’s going to be over. Besides, time flies when you’re having fun! I feel like being happy is just so fantastic but they’re never long enough. They always come and go as fast as lightning. I’m trying very hard to keep this feelings last. I make sure that I have my camera in my pocket every time I go out. Not in my bag, in my pocket- for easy access. Every time I see something that makes me happy and instantly daydream I have to immediately take photo of it... and then continue daydreaming.

Right now, I’m sitting on a sofa bed at Greg's parents house in a farm of 4500 of acres wide. Their farm is located just outside a little town with only around 3500 population called West Wyalong. West Wyalong is 3 hours drive away from Canberra. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, with all this space is just so novel and peaceful to me.

I’ll be going to church and spend a lot of time with Greg’s family tomorrow and on top of that, I’m looking forward to drive around the farm and speed like crazy.

Stories From Sumba

2009-08-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

I learned that Germans kiss each other’s cheeks to say goodbye. Javanese do that too but a bit different. They’d do a ‘nose’ kiss on each other’s cheeks to say hello... and then there’s the Sumbanese. they literally ‘flick’ each others, nose to nose to say ‘hello’. Simon and I stood in half bewilderment and half amused when we saw our Sumbanese friend and guide, Yubi demonstrate this to us. I thought to myself, “Who’s the creative chum that come up with that?”. I guess I always knew that I’m in for a cultural treat.

The most interesting topic to talk about Sumba is, of course its tradition. Sure we’re driving around the place using a modern transportation vehicle like a car or a motorbike. But when we visited the traditional village, I feel like I’ve gone back thousands of years before my time and witnessed the real deal. Well... it’s either that or I feel like I’m a 60’s Hollywood movie set.

Yubi took us for a day trip to West Sumba to visit some of these villages. It took us 3-4 hours for us to get to West Sumba from the East. The main city in West Sumba is called Waikabubak. ‘Wai’ meaning water and ‘bubak’ meaning bubbling. I’m guessing it must means bubbling spring water. The main city in East Sumba where we were staying is called “Waingapu” but I never did find out what “Gapu” means. Sounds like “Garpu” which is ‘fork’ in Indonesian, but "Water fork" wouldn’t make any sense, so I guess not.

These traditional villages can be found in most places, but the most interesting one is the one that sits on top of a hill, in the middle of a ‘modern’ city. It is really bizarre how these people prefer to stick to their traditional way of living when everyone around them have changed.

Though... we found satellites sitting next to some of the traditional houses... gotta love that twist!

So, what’s up with the shape of the house? The shape of the house symbolizes 3 things, lower life (hell), the present world, and the heavenly life. They usually keep their animals in the lower part of the house, the people live in the middle of the house, and they keep their idols at the upper part of their house.... I can't help but wonder what its like to sleep above your pet goats or pigs....

We managed to go inside one of the house. It was very interesting and surprisingly cozy. It’s made entirely of bamboo and they actually have room dividers for the bedroom. The kitchen is a simple stove in the middle of the house. They keep their rice in huge barrels just behind the front door.
Traditional Marapu people bury their relatives around their houses.... hence the many block of stones outside their houses. Marapu people believe that their relatives spirit still lingers around the area. The more elaborate the grave is, the more respectable the person was. I found it funny how some of these people still dry out their laundry on these tomb stones. Also, when I was on the site, I forgot how odd it was to be standing in the middle of these graves.

The grave in this photo here obviously belong to some important person...it's HUGE!

Some of the marapu women activities is to make handmade items. Such as this woman, she is making a cloth using the ‘tying’ technique using this traditional machine there. And there was also another lady is making little ‘boxes’ from janur which is young coconut leaves.

We drove to a beach after we visited Waikabubak. Though we didn’t stay there for long because we were getting eaten by sandflies the second we got out of the car. I didn’t even get to soak my feet in the water! But from what I can see it was a nice beach if only the sandflies weren’t there. If you like taking pictures, Sumba has got so many breathtaking landscapes. We saw so many good views as we were driving along.

There's a story that along this beach somewhere, a group of Sumbanese tribe had to move a large sacred stone from one place to another. They tied the giant sacred rock with special rope and dragged it across the beach to get to their destination. One day the special rope snapped. I can’t be sure why, but limited in their beliefs and tradition, they cant use just any other rope to drag the stone away. The only solution was to plant some cotton, wait for it to grow, harvest it, spin it into a rope, and continue dragging the rock again. I think this story is so ridiculous it's funny.

The previous day, Simon had the opportunity to explore more of Sumba while I stayed in the hotel because I was suffering on leg cramp and some crazy itch.
Simon visited kampung raja which literally mean “King’s village” in East Sumba. When we were there, the king had been deceased for awhile. We don’t know exactly how long, but the body is still sitting there inside the house. When a king passed away in Sumba, they will keep the body inside a house for one year. In that one year, they will sacrifice animals like, a chicken or a pig every night before the king is buried in his tombstone for the following year. His servants would sleep in the same room as the body for security reasons. The term ‘servant’ in this village is different to a slave. When someone becomes a king in this village, he is responsible for the well-being of everyone, including the servants. I guess that’s why a king is so respected here. He’s probably isn’t that rich either.

Another interesting story is that as soon as a king died, they will also have to kill his horse. They believe that the spirit of the king will need to ride the horse to go to heaven or something like that. So, what happen to everyone else when they die? Well... I guess they just have to walk... or hitchhike to get to heaven. Though, I don’t think they do this type of ceremony anymore.

Simon also visited a very poor family that lives on the hills. They are so poor the kids had to walk around half an hour away from their house to collect water from the well. The father’s job is to collect dry grass around the field. When Simon came back to show me the photos, he told me a sad story about this family.

One of the daughter had reached middle school and the school is too far away to walk so she needs to get a driver to get there. However, the family didn’t have enough money to pay for the transport. A driver offered the family her transport if only she would sleep with him. Desperate for her to gain higher education, the family agrees and gave her away. I don’t know if she finished school or not, but she ended up getting pregnant and giving birth to a child, so I guess not. The driver guy just disappeared. I felt very heart broken when I heard this. I wasn’t there to see the family, but the house must be so full of kids, and by the looks of the photo, no one really seem to be upset. I guess they will never be lonely.

Our second night in Sumba, we got invited by ibu Sari, for dinner. She is Yubi’s sister in law. We had such a good night and learned a lot about Sumba’s culture. She told us that having a a foster child in Sumba is normal. She’s got several children living in her house. Though, these foster children are related to her and she took care of them because their parents can’t. Her family pays for their education and therefore giving them hope for the future. They didn’t join us for dinner though, they were serving us dinner so I guess they had to do some service for her by living in the house.

Another interesting cultural aspect in Sumba is that the relationship between uncles/aunts and their niece is supposed to be closer than the relationship between the kids and their own parents. Say, when they kids are growing up and are making life decisions such as, what to study at uni, who to marry, what to do for a living, etc, their aunts and uncles are the ones who will have to approve, and their parents are not allowed to disagree. Also, regarding marriage, when a person is getting married before a sibling that is older than him/her, that person will have to ask permission from the oldest sibling if he/she can get married earlier than them. If they approve, then go ahead, but if they don’t, they’ll have to wait until the oldest person get married.

So, Simon and I left Sumba after spending 3 nights/days there. While I was there, I got bitten by some sort of evil flea that gives me unbearable itch all over my body. It wouldn’t go away no matter what I do. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it and I know it will disappear as soon as I leave Sumba. Yubi is worried that I will never go back to Sumba because of this. And up till now, I think Simon still feels bad about ‘dragging’ me there. But even when I was suffering those itch, I didn’t really mind. When I woke up in the middle of the night because it really hurts, I just prayed and will eventually go back to sleep without fail. I knew that in a larger scheme of things, stuff like this wouldn’t matter much, because the trip was very memorable. At least I know that the next time I go back there, I will have to bring my own sleeping bag and an endless supply of insect repellent.

I guess Africa must be next on the line for Simon....

Have a look at my facebook photo album for more photos and other smaller stories of Sumba: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=149067&id=522165445&l=86627a7172

Our First Day in Sumba EVER!

2009-08-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

On the 20th of July, Simon and I said our goodbyes to Daniel in Bali and flew to a remote island that is around 2 hours South East of Bali. Daniel had taken the plane over to Jakarta to fly back home to Sydney. I wouldn’t have a slightest idea of why I would follow Simon to Sumba if he didn’t ask me. I mean, who WOULD go there?! (Exception to Western surfers fanatics) For Simon, his reason to go there is to visit Yubi, a friend he met in his church back in Canberra. I decided to go with Simon when he convinced me in an email saying, "I just saw photos of Sumba! I love Sumba!" ... and I thought "Oh? Already?!"

I couldn’t believe how much hassle we had to go through to book our ticket to Sumba. It’s so remote that most travel agents in Jakarta couldn’t be bothered ringing me back about the ticket! Though, it turns out to be a pleasant flight from Bali to Sumba, except the plane is really old and the landing was scarily ‘creative’. When we were above the island, we can see the landscape clearly from above. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen or imagined! The land is red-ish and dry with patches of trees here and there. The top of the hills are flat, and there’s so many of it that I’m not entirely sure if the hills are the actual surface and the gullys are well... giant cracks of the dry high land. In between the narrow deep gully's, they've planted a lot of rice which made it look very green in contrast to the red dry hills. Simon and I looked down at the mysterious and odd landscape below us in silence, slightly confused.

“Fionna... where are we?”
“I’m not so sure... but it looks like Africa.”

I knew it then and there Simon had fallen in love with this island... He is, afterall, is head over heels with Africa... Uganda to be specific.

Yes, Sumba is remote and poor. I didn’t see any building that is more than 2 stories high and there are just villages everywhere. Some of the buildings are modern made of cement concrete but a lot of traditional houses also still exist.

We landed on Sumba’s airport in the afternoon. Needless to say why you can tell by this photo that the airport is so marveously simple. Thats the way we like it! :p

Our friend Yubi picked us up from the airport with her brother. Before we even managed to go check into the hotel, we went over to the horse race first. Sumba people are obsessed with this sport. The horse are different in a way that they are smaller and therefore the jockey has to be extremely light. The jockeys are normally self taught boys of the age 4 – 11 years old

Some people who saw this photo would respond "Wow, they've got coke there!" Yes, they sure do! ( I'd like to take my hat off to Coke's amazing marketing team for this) Though it would be handy for that lady to have a stand than just selling on the audiences seats!

After we checked in to the hotel, Yubi took us to a church who had recently partnered up with the Compassion project. When the car pulled up in front of the church, Simon and I were a bit shocked as how someone had just decided to cut off half of the hill where the church is sitting on! I asked the pastor of that church about that and he said that they wanted to move the church on the flat surface so that older people don’t have to climb up the hill in order to go to church. Though, it's a bit worrying how they cut the hill off so close to the actual building.

Many of the children in this project are not sponsored yet, and because the area is so poor, a lot of these kids aren’t Christians either. A lot of them are still followers of the traditional belief of ‘Marapu’ and even one of the child is a Muslim. It was a very unusual feeling sitting inside the church listening to them mumbling Christian songs and praying with us.

After visiting the Compassion project, Yubi took Simon and I to a Bible study group. It was a really good experience for me as at the end of the study, I get to hear testimonies from people around my age who really doesn’t have much, but are happy. I dare say that they are even happier than me! There was this girl who expressed how grateful she is to be doing a job that she loves, a guy who quit his job as a room service in a hotel in Bali but now is content with whatever God had given him, and a young lecturer who is content with the little pay he receives. It made me realize the stronger power of happiness that is based on righteousness against happiness that is based on materialism. Sure it’s not easy to be poor, but it doesn’t stop these people do good things, happy and content! It must take a hell of a lot of faith and contentment to be able to live with nothing and yet have everything!

We left the little house where the Bible study's at and Yubi took us to the local radio station where she plans a session for us to talk about Compassion project. Simon and I were pretty nervous, but for me, being exhausted kindda helped me with the stage fright. I thought Simon wasn’t scared as he’s been on air to talk about Compassion several times in Canberra, but I guess being pressured to talk Indonesian would be a good reason to be nervous. I ended up doing a lot of the talking and answering questions about the project. My mind was pitch black the second I heard my own voice on the headphones. It’s just one of those moment when you know so much about stuff but loose it all when being put on the spotlight.

I’m not really sure how I got through. Yubi and Simon made it easier for me as they are very relaxed about the whole thing. We had an amazing response from the listeners that night. We received many sms and phone calls in our 2 hour session. I’m SO encouraged to see how so many people took their time to tell us that they are excited, honoured, proud and appreciative to have Simon, who came all the way from Australia to visit Sumba and to hear about what Compassion is doing for the community. I’m so honored to have the opportunity to talk about Compassion that night. I believe that we managed to save some kids that night through the radio program.

To learn more about Compassion, please visit: http://www.compassion.com.au/ You might as well go and sponsor a child or 2 while you're at it! :p

Allen's Story

2009-07-31T01:32:00.000-07:00

Allen is a 9 year old boy who is being sponsored by my friend, Daniel. It was quite shocking that at this important and meaningful time of our visit to his hometown in Manado, Allen’s dad has been put to jail by the local police.

Allens dad works as a motorbike taxi driver to support his family. A few days back, he picked up an old lady where an accident accured and she died the next day. Her side of the family didn’t try to sue him or anything, but the local police had put him to jail. Anyone in their right mind could tell that the police are taking advantage of the situation. They've put him to jail with no real offence then asked the family 5 million rupiah (US $500) for his release. That made me really angry. It’s clearly corruption and it’s an opression towards the poor community!

We visited Allen's house first. The picture above is of us in Allen's house. Allen's mum is on the right side holding a baby. We're not sure who all of these kids are. They're most likely neighbors and relatives. There's so many kids everywhere! Daniels special gift for Allen from Australia was a soccer ball and an air pump for the ball. Daniel couldn't have done any better I think. Allens mum was crying.... actually, she was absolutely sobbing with happiness when she saw Allen receiving the present. She told us that she wanted to get those same things but she didn’t have the money to purchase it for her son. Her story made me want to cry too. To me that is like a glimpse of an unconditional love of a mother who thinks everything for her child. It's a complete selfless act and I really hope that when I have a child, I can love my child the way she does. I can't say that I witness this kind of love too often in my daily life. It was really touching.

We went to the police station to see if we can have Allen’s dad out for the day. We can’t even let Simon, Daniel or me to go in there just in case that when they see a foreigner, they might just ask for money, up the price for his release or whatever. So while some of us stayed in the car, Leidy (Compassion worker), Allens mum and aunt went in for us. The police let him out for 5 minutes, and in that 5 minute, we managed to say hi and take photos with him. The photo below is the one that we took. Allen's dad is the one in the red shirt and his mother is the one standing in front of him.

It was a very special day for us.... we did so many things with Allen, his brother Aldo and his mum. We took them for lunch in the mall. They never had the money to do that so it was quite special. We love watching Aldo going crazy over the colourful drink pictures on the menu and looking the kids so happy to use a hand dryer for the first time. Allen also had a bit of a session with Simon’s camera. It really made us notice the special little things that we often take for granted.

After lunch we went to the project to attend a short church service and visiting the project classes. I was very impressed to see how diligent the kids are. None of them were distracted or playing by themselves... they’re all so focused and determined. The photo below is of the children during the church service, they're soooo cute!

After the service, we had a look at Allen’s details and performace in the project, then we had a chat to the teachers there. While the boys are busy pumping up their new soccer ball, Leidy and I had a really good chat with pastor Karel about his early determination to help the surrounding area and how hard it was before Compassion offers a partnership. He told us that children used to get raped while they're walking to go to school! He said that after he partnered up with Compassion, everything that he dreamed of doing for the kids came true, and more! That sounds so amazing to me... I wish I could hear this kind of stuff more in the news! Sometimes I feel that the media could publish more inspiring good news like this than the worldly good or bad stuff.

After the project, we took the family back home. Daniel wanted to spend another half an hour there, so we talked a bit more, did a bit of praying and even had a quick session of playing ping pong table. The photo below is of us and Allen's family in front of their house before we say goodbye. We were absolutely exhausted by the end of the day... we didn’t expect the visit to take us the whole day.... It was well worth it!

Discovering My Own Country

2009-07-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

It’s July, and it’s that time of the year to get out of Jakarta and do some serious travels again. Simon (my friend from Canberra, grew up in Perth, originally Singapore) had already been here for 2 weeks, and his friend, Daniel (from Sydney, grew up in Wellington, NZ originally from South Korea) is joining us to visit Allen, his sponsor child in Manado, North of Sulawesi. Simon also has a sponsor child, Vicki. I just randomly tag along for the ride.

I have to be honest, in my opinion not many people who are born and bred in Jakarta have much perspective of what’s going on in Indonesia, outside of Jakarta (and maybe Bali). To my belief, people from Jakarta only like the busy happening places, and the places outside the big cities just seemed a little too primitive to be explored. We just assumed that there’s nothing there. When we get bored of Jakarta, we like to explore not the neighboring city, but to the same modern and happening countries around the world like Singapore, Japan, Australia, USA, Canada, Europe as if these countries ARE our neighboring cities. I've met countless ppl from Jakarta who lives in Aus or US but never met one person from Jakarta who have said that they've lived in a secluded place and spoke highly of it.

I’d like to omit myself from that category. In my defence, I 've learned to live, love and be content in quiet places. Even if I do go overseas for change, I’d like to go to places where there's no Indonesian in sight. I've had my chance of living primitively where seeing a traffic light was as rare and distracting as seeing a random spaceshuttle thats been build overnight next to a dusty road. But just like them, I never really thought of really exploring my own country before labelling them as 'primitive'.

So, we're going to Manado. We had to get up at 2am to leave home at 3am to not miss our 5am plane. It was a bit of an effort to get ready, but it was good to sleep through the 3 hour journey there.

"Lion Air... We Make People Fly!" ... and still had the energy to pose like that at 5am...

In the afternoon, we went to a bookstore just across our hotel and I bought myself a map of Indonesia. Our local friend and tourguide, Frejon keeps mentioning all these places and islands in East Indonesia that I've heard of but don't really know where they are, so I thought a map might come in handy. Ok, so the map turns out to be more than handy cause before I saw the map I thought I knew where I was, but after that I realize... I’m actually really really far away from Jakarta! Now it clicked to me why we flew 3 hours instead of the average one hour flight to my usual party places in Singapore or Bali.

And then I start to take notice of all the other island and places that I never notice... I never knew that Indonesia have islands that are very very close to the Philipines! Or there are flights that actually goes to the large-ish islands in between Sulawesi and Papua. I could also see hundreds of tiny islands that God knows how people do survive there. What can these islanders do for a living? How do they get around? Boats? Do they have a supermarket? Is it even possible to have a supermarket? Maybe they just have to kill animals and collect rain water constantly to survive. Can they speak Indonesian? Do they even realize that they belong to a country?

Despite my childish and primitive thoughts, I've found Manado is actually a city that is making huge development progress. Firstly, Manado's airport is an International airport. In this respect, Canberra, the capital city of Australia is more primitive because they only have local airport flying local planes. The upcoming world ocean conference "Sail bhunnaken" is going to be held in Manado and well over 100 countries are participating. I guess that's a good enough reason to have an international airport then....

Like Jakarta, Manado also have lots of malls which consists of the usual retail shops, coffee shops, bakeries, cinema, kareoke bars, etc. Whats best about this is that the malls are built only a couple meters away from the ocean. So there goes my assumption that everything outside Java is primitive. I totally love Manado's landscape! The mountains that raises up around the sea shore are a bit like Wellington in New Zealand minus the crap weather. In one of the hills, we found the most incredible, massive flying Jesus statue. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country by population, but Manado is predominantly, and (as proven by this statue) shamelessly a Christian city.

I'm also very impressed with the cleanliness of this city. Anywhere in Java you'd find people carelessly throwing non-recyclable rubbish in public areas. Here, they boast their national cleanliness award, and I actually feel quite comfortable using their public transport. In fact, I love it! They have a disco mini bus, with the loud music, hot pink seats and stuff... it's like a super convinient portable party! The ocean is very clean and then there’s the famous Bhunnaken island just 45 minutes boat ride away for an awesome experience of snorkeling and diving. I totally think that this place is better than Bali, though they don’t have many resorts and all those artsy touristy stuff yet (which could be a good thing for some people).

I totally love Manado, and I think my perspective of Indonesia will never be the same again after this....

One thing that we were missing in our trip though was that Manado is famous for it's bat (and other weird animals like rats, iguanas, dogs, etc) cuisine. Though for some reason I don't really feel like I'm missing out... :p

Picture of Manado Tua island (Old Manado)

Gleni’s Story: The Little Things That Counts...

2009-07-29T22:39:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, 2nd of July I had the amazing opportunity to visit my boyfriends sponsor child in Central Java, Indonesia. The program is run by Compassion Australia (http://www.compassion.com.au/).

This trip is not my first time. I went with Simon last year to visit his sponsor kids. My friend Simon is my source of inspiration in dealing with this kind of issues. He's like the king of being compassionate to children in poverty. He's been the Canberra's Compassion advocate leader for 3 years and has got 7 sponsor kids. 5 in Indonesia, 1 in Uganda, Africa and another in Thailand. He's got all that to give and he's only 1 year older than me (24). To me, he's like the modern day version of Sir William Wilberforce.

My boyfriend's sponsor child name is Gleni. To visit Gleni, we went to an area outside Semarang (central Java) called Ambarawa... this place is totally amazing! It’s very green and they have lots of plantations like padi fields, longan trees, coffee, corn, vegetables and flower nurseries.

When we stopped in front of the school we were stunned with the breathtaking view in front of his school. I mean, the whole area is already very nice, but to have a view of your own is really super cool! At night you can see the lights flickering in the middle of darkness. It's so beautiful, I wish I could live here.

This is my first time to visit a child as my own and I was hoping that Gleni is not shy. I wouldn't have a clue of what to do! As it turns out, he was very very veeeery shy. I know that when a child meet his/her sponsor for the first time, they're always shy and therefore it is normal, but I'm so not prepared for this! He wouldn’t say anything to me and it’s almost as if he’s reluctant to meet me. I tried to ask him questions and tried to get him to show us around the school... and he just walked back to his class and did more of his drawing. All of us just kindda stood there and laugh, it felt really awkward.

While Gleni is doing his drawing we had a good chat with the project staff in the office. We talked a lot about how the project is run, what the child get through the sponsorship, about Glenis performance in the project (school report card, health, growth, church attendance, involment in activities, etc...) and the situation of Gleni’s family. I was very impressed with the amount information they have filed on the child. It gives me the sense of security that Gleni is in good hands.

We went to visit Gleni’s house after visiting the project, accompanied by a couple of the project staff. While we were there, I got Greg to ring my mobile phone so that he can talk directly to Gleni. Gleni was extremely shy that he only managed to say one word at a time... and that also requires hard work from Erlan convincing him to talk playfully. I also have some presents from Greg to give to Gleni. He got Gleni a kangaroo doll and an Australian flag, but the highlight of the present was the Transformer robot toy. Gleni was totally absorbed as soon as he saw the toy!

This is how Gleni's story go:

Gleni is mostly taken care by his grandmother. Everyday, she would take him to the school, or the project, and she’d wait outside the building until he’s done and afterwards take him back home. His grandfather is the family’s source of income. He works as a labourer, and the work is seasonal. Sometime the grandmother helps the family income by collecting enceng gondok (a water plant) that grows in swamps near the area. The plants are worth Rp150 per bunch. When it’s dried, it’s the price goes up to Rp2.000 (20 cents) per bunch. Gleni’s father had left his mother for another wife. The mother then remarrys and had Gleni’s little brother, Agung... we don’t know for sure but it seems that he had also left her.... The mother is unemployed.

The pictures below are the water plants that they collect and the dried version of the plant.

My favorite time there was when I had the chance to read Greg’s letter (which I have translated to Indonesian) to them. The grandmother was in tears as I was reading the letter and it really touched me deeply. Learning about Gleni’s financial and family situation made me sink.... When Greg sponsored Gleni he had no idea who they are and their situation. He didn’t really know that behind those forms that he filled and the money that got deducted automatically from his account in his sleep goes a very long way for Gleni’s family. It made me realize that how sometimes the small things that we do... the ones that are effortless, the ones that we don’t really think about, really makes a difference for someone else. Maybe it's time for me to think more highly of the little things that I do.

Wisdom From the Wikipedia Game

2009-05-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend and I are going through a longdistance relationship at the moment. So automatically, our activities together are limited to talking on skype, from everything else. It sucks.

One night, he introduced me to this game that we can play together while just being online using wikipidea. What you have to do in the game is this.

One person pick a random topic out of the blue for everyone (eg: piano, blue, rock, etc...)
Then click the “random article” button on the left side of Wikipedea’s page.
The page will come up with a random article.
Then, you will have to click all the blue links on the random article page (not including the ones at the right side of the page) until you end up with the random topic you’ve come up with your head.
The person who finds that page first, wins.

It’s a fun game, I like it. Maybe it’s because I manage to win Greg for a couple of rounds... stuff like that affects my perspective. But anyway, I think I’ve got some insights of life from playing this game.

The random topic we choose in our head is like a goal that we are looking for. The “random article” is like our gifts. This is like the things that you’ve been given and cannot choose in life like our race, our family, talents, etc.... When we click on the blue links of that page, it’s like we’re opening doors that we think would get us to our goal.

When you’re on the way of clicking the blue links, of course you will pick the ones you think may have some corrolation to your goal topic. There are times where the page just takes you to something really really random you just think that you’ve lost, but you found your link! Or there are also times when you think you’re really close, but you dont’ find the one link you’re looking for. However, you will always ended up finding your link, even if you’re slower than everyone else or had to press the back button several times.

I think life is a lot like that in terms of trying of trying to reach your goal. This game opens up my perspective about ‘doors’. I like to live a predictable life, failing to see that there’s doors I can open up and have a look around inside it. Doors I didn’t open because I’m shy talking to new people, lazy to try something out, scared of planes so skip travelling opportunities or trying out volunteering, stuff like that. They could be doors that leads me to my goal, or far from it... depending on what you want and your judgement.

My Stash

2009-04-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

As I was making jewelry, I realized the amount of stash I've got... sometimes when I've snapped out of my zone and look at my working space I wonder how I don't get confused....

Romantic Chapels in Bali

2009-04-13T02:22:00.000-07:00

My cousin Anita is getting married in December. She plans to have her wedding in Bali so the couple went to Bali over the Easter holiday to survey chapels to get married in. I decided to tag along with them for some reason. Well... they offered me to come, I didn’t just decide to crash the party.

We saw some pretty amazing chapels in our trip. We were a bit confused at the time because they’re all so stunning! We were visiting some pretty impressive settings and I don't normally get into luxuries but Indonesians like to think of their weddings to be super special and expensive so I guess it's fun to be able to get into it for a bit. I have to admit that I love expensive things though of course it's not like I could afford it for myself :p. Here are photos of the chapel we visited:

This chapel is called "Amanda" a cozy little triangular chapel in front of a pool for a small wedding. It's the only chapel we visited that is not facing straight towards the sea. The pool is multifunction as a scuba-diving practice. The chapel is so small though. It only fit guests up to 30 people so it's not that practical if you want a large wedding.

This chapel is called "Infinity" Conrad hotel. It's one of the chapel we really like. It's facing straight towards Nusa Dua beach and we love the water feature on the side walk to the chapel. I like the lawn space beside the chapel, it that can be used for the reception or parties. The beach in front of it is really alive, there's people doing all sorts of beachy activities and lots of planes flying by.

This is one of the chapel in Ayana resort (the former Ritz Carlton). The plus side of this chapel is that, it's on a cliff... and before the chapel, they've got make up room especially for the couple to get ready before getting in. I totally adore the chapels that are on a cliff better then the ones that are facing straight to the beach.

This is a photo of the view looking down the cliff next to the chapel. Isn't it amazing?!!! You can't see it in this picture, but they had built a deck on this beach where they set up one table. You can book this table for dinner with one other person (your partner of course) in which you will get however many courses of dinner, 2 butlers, 4 musicians, God knows how many dancers, and 4 hours to enjoy dinner in this spot for (only) US$1.500 ++. I know, it's mad, but apparently you'd have to book a year in advance if you want a spot cause they are fully booked most of the time.... I'm jealous at couples who have managed to get engaged there... It would've been sooo damn nice! >.<

This is the other chapel at the former Ritz Carlton, "Ayana". Bigger chapel and facing directly towards the sea. By this point we start to notice that the water feature in front of a chapel is almost like you couldn't build a chapel in Bali without it...

This is the chapel in St. Regis hotel. One of the most expensive hotels in Bali. The entrance is so amazing that we were all so "wowed" by it for about 10 minutes. One villa we visited is facing towards it's own private beach and have it's own private pool. The sand is raked and sifted every morning so it's supposed to be soft as well as good looking. Though I can't help thinking who had to do all that tedious job. Maybe some kid on detention at a school nearby.... It costs US $2850/night to stay in that particular villa. Well, that just made the chapel less of an impression to make than that villa...

After we walked around the hotel, we were all hot and sweaty and they gave us a mocktail. From memory, it was rockmelon and apel juice with a bit of basil in it... farout... who puts basil in their juice?!

We went to Blue Point spa and villa after St Regis and they have this chapel facing the sea on a cliff! This place is crowded with foreign tourist. The left side of the chapel is a pool and there's a lot of people surfing below the cliff. It seems to be a really popular surfing spot here. Reminds me of my friend Dave, I wish I could bring him here and see him getting all excited with the waves and this spunky place. The view here is amazing too by the way. The right side of this chapel are villas also facing the sea. The villas are quite small, but they have their own private pool, also facing the sea... it's so secluded and romantic! =)

This is a chapel is in the shape of a diamond. Pretty impressive on the first sight but then you'd think, "Man... this idea is forcing a bit..." I can't remember exactly the name of the hotel this chapel's in. I definitely like the lawn around the chapel though.

The last day of our trip, we went to this wedding venue in Uluwatu which is toooootally amazing. This chapel is called "Tirta Uluwatu". Again... on a cliff, facing the sea... my kind of location! =) This chapel accomodate up to 50 people. I'm not really sure why this place made so much more impression on me than the others... think it's because of the service. This venue is specially for weddings so the people here are very experienced in dealing with fussy things that most of us aren't used to. Also... they have class and good taste. Even the employers are against bad ideas from the customers. They'd dread to fulfill requests that they thought are bad ideas on the decor, food, amount of extra guests, etc... Talk about integrity in style!

This is the chapel almost right next to "Tirta Uluwatu" run by the same people. This chapel accomodate up to 100 people. If I were rich and get to marry in Bali, I think this would be it. It's on a cliff facing the sea, secluded, small and cozy... a small wedding sounds attractive to me

After this trip, I finally realize the hassle of getting married. It's a tough job if you want it to be THE biggest day of your life. I wonder if I could cope with the decision making when it comes. I wonder if I could have the wedding of my dreams and still be budget... it looks impossible at this point of view.... I just wanna fly my friends from all of over the world to Bali and enjoy that beach in St. Regis with the raked sand and party till the time we have to check out . Oh wait... that's just a party not even a wedding... meh, I'm all confused now.... Well if I don't get inspired for weddings, at least I'm inspired of awesome venues for a kick ass party in Bali!

My kind of exhibition

2009-04-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

Now this is the kind of exhibition I’m into! The one that allows me to shop!!! It’s completely different than the one in Europe. No one cares if I pop my camera out (though, I still feel conscious about it). And I could ask everyone for their name cards and brochure. I love this, especially looking at traditionally influenced handmade things. They even have people doing demo's drawing batik or making blankets using super cool instruments so traditional that you can't just buy them in a shop.

This is a 5 day exhibition held in Jakarta, exhibiting local art. I had taken a couple of photos with my phone because I forgot my camera. Though, as I was about to upload them, it turns out that I don't have the software to convert the file or something like that... so I only took photos with my camera of the things I've bought. Here are some of the things that I have to give you a tiny glimpse of what was there:

Pictured above here are a pair of batik heels. It’s very beautiful and comfortable, but the best thing about it is the price! Rp 125.000 (US $10.50) for a brand new handmade pair.

Then there’s the handmade flowers, made out of unused corn leaves and coconut tree leaves. Check out those delicate petal waves! They are quite fragile and absolutely not waterproof. Pictured here are small red flowers for Rp.5.000 (US $0.40) and Rp 9.000 (US $0.75) for the larger cream ones. Larger flowers were also available for Rp15.000 (US $1. 25). I reckon the world would be a better place if people can be creative in the things they don’t use like this...

A couple of days later, I went back there with my mum and our family friend, Florence. I love Florence, she’s my no.1 customer next to my mum. =) My mum bought me a pair of silver leaf shaped earrings which were very adorable. It was a little over my budget so I would’t have bought it if my mum was’t around. It was Rp280.000 (US $23.3) for a pair. If I can recall correctly, their jewelry workshop is not too far from here....

Then there’s this precious shirt that I was fighting over with a woman. There’s a batik stand that sells really beautiful shirt in a kimono cut but using batik like patterned materials. One lady there was buying absolutely everything. It was obvious that she was going to re-sell them. I wanted this one shirt so bad and I had to beg her to spare me one of her shopping item. Seriously, she had about a hundred shirts and I had to beg her to spare me one. Anyway... so she did ended up giving it to me. It was a bit pricey compared to the other items they have (Rp 300.000, US $25) and I have to re-cut it because it’s too large for me to begin with, but I just love the cut, pattern and the interesting red so it’s going to be really worth it!

Mumbling About Work

2009-04-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

It’s finally April. It’s almost 2 am but I can’t sleep because I’m so excited! In the past year I had been working full time at my dad’s office doing whatever is there to do. I work normal hours from 8am-5pm, but going to work takes an hour and twice as long to get back so that's 12 hours in total out from home. It really suck.

I reckon I’ve been a tough kid in the past years. I could cope moving overseas by myself at 13 to a foreign country, foreign food and language. I could also cope moving from the city to the mountains where I have to chop wood for hot showers, and run up and down mountains 3 times a week. I could cope moving places and changing friends, but now it’s time for the real challenge... office work... I have lost against office work. Office work had really beat me down to the grown.

Sitting around on my bum 8 hours a day just made me feel like the living dead, or a marshmallow, or a rock, depending on the weather. And it’s not just that, it’s as boring as hell. I’ve gone through my diseases, my depression, I’ve proved the world that I suck at going to work. Maybe I am totally unemployable... maybe I’m just adunno... made to bum around at home. I wonder how will I survive the world if I can’t cope with discipline and the ‘serious’ stuff. Looking at those people who always mean ‘business’ convinced me that I will never really grow up. I can't take them seriously for some reason...

So, starting this month I’ve moved jobs and been allowed to work part time. Monday-Wednesday. The rest of the time I could pretty much do anything I want! I’m so excited about it I can’t sleep. Actually, every time I think about it I can’t go to sleep. I keep imagining, I could bead more often, draw, write music, arrange my flowers, discover new places, and have more time for people... oh gosh I wonder if I can mush everything in one go!

Ok, done mumbling. Should really go to sleep now...

Visiting David

2009-03-22T23:38:00.003-07:00

After the full on exhibition in Frankfurt and a day trip to Paris, I get to visit my German friend David in Stuttgart. We were planning to go for a roadtrip... well... there isn’t really much planning involved and the result is rather chaotic....

I met David in Canberra, Australia. He was a friend of a friend and we got to know each other at a church camp. At the time, I had devised a game of mismatch Bible characters for an ice breaker game. So a person with a ‘Samson’ name tag has to find ‘Delilah’, ‘Mary’ has to find ‘Joseph’, etc.... I had to sign people as they come in and my name tag was ‘whale’ (I had to find my partner Jonah, and yes I know that the fish who swallowed Jonah isn’t exactly a whale). David walked in and said, “Thats a nice name you call yourself.”

David was an exchange linguistic student in Australia at the time. After he finished the exchange program, his rent was expiring and he stayed in me and my housemates flat for a couple of months. David is a bit of a hippie. One Christmas, we were the only 2 people left in Canberra. We celebrate Christmas at the back of his house doing a good ol Ausie BBQ with a bit of metal barrel, bits of coal and gum leaves and wired tray for the sausages to sit on… with hippie-ish music playing in the background.

It was hard for his friends to imagine that he has parents or live in a normal house. We’d like to think of him and his girlfriend living in a forest, inside a semi- perfect, cube-shaped house with triangular roof. His house would be on a tree, filled with old rusty furniture that he got from random garage sales in the closest village. The ladder up to the house would be a single firm knotted rope and his friends would be a variety of wild animals. He would write books on the trials of his life, his travels and a collection of mysteries and contemplations of a living God on an old type-writer. His other activities would be reading, teaching his animal and other hippie friends to speak Pidgin and search rhubarb plants for food.

But as I arrived at the front of his house, I soon discovered that David lives in a normal German house, with normal parents, eats normal German food and brothers who are almost exactly like him.

The Color Issue

2009-03-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

Last month in February I was very fortunate to be involved at the Frankfurt Fair in Germany. An ‘invites only’ yearly exhibition displaying many housewares from manufacturers or trading companies targeting retailers as their customers. It was very exciting for me since it was my first time there. The place is HUGE! I was there for 5 days and I swear, there are SO many cool things that I didn’t get a chance to see. They have up to 10 buildings which are loaded from top to bottom.

So, starting next month in April, I will be working in a tableware trading company and printing company, which is why I get the chance to see this amazing exhibition. It is also a must for me to wonder around the exhibition and see what large company exists and what’s the world up to in terms of trends, designs and fashion. No doubt I’m inspired by many things. I love the European taste of nature and how they apply it in their houseware designs. I love to see products from all over the world, their uniqueness and their passion to make beautiful things available to many people.

As the exhibition is loaded with stuff... everyone are SO conscious about those horrible people who loves to copy other peoples products. You’d assume the usual things, no camera, no videos, no drawing obvious sketches in front of some stall... that’s totally cool with me. I'm very capable of being inspired and create things on my own. So, what I’m totally not cool with is when they’d assume you’re going to copy (or do other evil things depends on how far their imagination goes) because of the color of your skin.

At first, I’d walk around as if I’m at a flea market. I’d stop and look, ask questions, get friendly... then soon enough, I figured that as soon as you stop in front of their stand, someone would immediately ask for a namecard. They'd asks me questions like; are you a buyer or a seller, why are you looking at my things and also minute details about your company. Soon enough, I learn to not stop while looking at things, and later on I learned that they are more conscious when an Asian is looking because it’s a known fact that the Chinese are famous for copying stuff.

But, even though I’m Chinese looking, I’m an Indonesian. I live 9 years of my life in Australia and I can’t bloody speak the language. But do people care? No, they look at the color of your skin, they assume you’re evil and they’re automatically rude to you.

A really bad experience was when I picked up a brochure (on spices and salad dressings by the way, it has nothing to do with what my company are selling) and some German lady just snatched away from me and basically told me to get out while the rest of her customers gets pampered in tasting her products. Like, hello?! Does your brochure contain secret recipes that would kill Asians? Which era are you living in anyway? The rest of the world are in the year of 2009! Aren’t you educated enough to realize by now that men are equal regardless what they look like?! Yes... I was very angry... but I just walked out.

Later on, I ventured off to the jewelry hall. I’m not sure what it is, but people there are much friendlier. I met an English jeweler who approached me with a friendly smile while I was nervously looking around. I met some Hong Kong pearl trader who helped me in learning more about pearls and semi precious stones. I met a German and Canadian couple who does a lot of traveling to collect materials for their jewelry. I also met a very nice man from Afghanistan who sells semi precious stones. We had a great chat and I expressed to him about the discrimination that I’m experiencing at the exhibition. It turns out that he felt pretty much the same as an Afgan.

This is the first time I really experience racism for myself. I’ve seen it a lot on American tv, and I always thought that it was a past issue, but sadly it isn’t. What are these people having issues with, Really? I find it hard to believe that its just simply a color thing. And what are we currently doing to stop these issues?

Growing Bulbs

2009-03-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Since I was a kid, there's only one talent that I have and that is creativity. As I grew up, I find that this talent can come in many different mediums, and thats where I get a bit confused. I'm 23 years old and I envy people who are my age, or younger than me who have already made strong roots on what they are doing. On the other hand, I can't seem to focus myself on one thing. I will jump from one thing to other, look back, and realized that I should have strained myself into temptations that distracts me from what I should be focusing on. I'm not sure if this is a curse or blessing.

It's been more than a year since I graduated from the Australian National University on jazz vocals. I have been taught by the greats and love writing music immensely. I'm still a proud alumni of the university, but had barely sang or written a note ever since I left. While I was in uni, I wrote a song called Tulip Tree. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a Tulip Tree, so to me, tulip tree is a song about miracle and about excelling in a slow pace.

Miracle can come in many ways... but to me, if something happened that I thought it wouldn't, I would consider that as a miracle... and as someone who doesn't really expect much in situations, miracle happens quite a bit. It often happens when I create things. Like, if things come out better than I expected, or got my song gets played on a local radio, I would be like, "Wow... how did that happen?" kindda thing.

Now, I'm still a little bulb who is slowly peeking out little leaves onto the early morning sunshine. The circumstances that I'm in right now asks me for a new start. I'm leaving my current office desk job and move to a designing part time job to discover the things that I could've create if I hadn't been sitting in an office all day. So, I hope I'd be able to see more miracles happening soon...