The 300th Post

I woke up feeling blessed with good friends I have. I am so lucky. So strange that the feeling came in the morning. It made my morning although I worked for two hours before preparing self to go. Yes, I accepted another emergency assignment from MBO a few days ago. I feel lighter to do this than the previous. My writing is flowing since I have been familiar with the terms and contents.

This is my 300th post after 9.5 months blogging. I changed to Blogger Beta the other day and made a slight change in the page look. It’s part of my celebration – my personal achievement. I’m still far from good but I could see my progress. That’s good enough to start a long term commitment. Ya?

Today is another day with friends. Same flock attended an interesting talk at H library in the morning. The talk was about the remake of old songket motifs. Songket is golden thread handwoven sarong from Sumatera. The couple who make the effort to preserve the tradition are from Switzerland. They have been living in Asia for years and in West Sumatera about twenty years.

What they do is taking pictures of the old motifs, process the pictures in computer to make the pattern shows like cross-stitch pattern, and assist the weaver to ‘translate’ the pattern. They established a foundation with a Sumateran lady who works in the field. The daughter of this lady runs the foundation and the son-in-law who works as film-maker documents the process for promoting. All of them are shown in photo.

They are exhibiting their work in a gallery in Jakarta for ten days. Also in the same venue, the local government displays about twenty old songkets. This is the best opportunity to see such art because those songkets rarely went out of the region.

I was amazed by the dedication the couple put into. They speak Indonesian easier than English. They published a book about the history of songket and what they do in Indonesian. I asked Hart how he did it. He looked at me ‘blankly’ that ES (my Swiss friend) had to tell me that he understands Indonesian better. He opened the exhibition in flawless Indonesian last evening, she said. Hm.

I bought the book and got it signed. The ladies had been dying to have light lunch in the plaza. Same flock again went to have lunch and talked about cultures. NEL joined us later from airport. I learned new fact of other cultures every time I mingled with my cross-cultural friends. Also of the politics sometimes :-)

Day was ended nicely. Nice car pooling arrangement. So ‘peacefully’ complicated because we could go and return in different cars ha ha.

The evening was another session with friends. I was battling quite long to go or not to go. I was close to not go because I remembered PEG said about her evening program Stay at home and do nothing. How I long to do the same although I would not be happy not to do anything.

I decided to go. DS, my well-known artist friend, and her students hold a joint exhibition at DS’s childhood house. Among the students are NIE and JEA – two good girlfriends from H art group. To let down three good friends was too much for me.

I found out later that the venue is not far from home. Perfect. I got there before the opening. I made a quick tour and spent more time to chat with the girls. In less than two hours I was home again. Now I know, to actually do is not hard. It’s the plan that makes thing harder to do :-)