Cerita Umi Bakrie

Being a big Land Rover’s fan, one of the first things that Nano did upon our arrival in Bogor is to hunt for one. Less than 3 months since we arrived, we got a green 1983’s Land Rover. Yes, it is a monstrous thing but it did come handy if I need to go to some inaccessible place to do my survey. Unfortunately, last year the petrol prices soar to almost double. Since the LR loves to drink a lot of petrol, we bought (actually I insist) another car for everyday use. This time a Daihatsu TAFT Hiline, which is more efficient but Nano grumble that “ … it is not too powerful as the LR”. We still have the LR but use it rarely. Nowadays, half of Nano’s energy goes to farming. We rent a land near our place. Previously he had hundreds of home range chicken, but after the chicken got stolen little by little (it started with 5 chickens, and several weeks later 20 missing) he decided to sold almost all to the market during last Idul Fitri. He still got several chicken though, plus 4 fishponds. So I ...

It's breeding time! Of course, I did not refer to the famous ulama in Bandung, Aa Gym who choose polygamy (much to the dismay of lots of Indonesian moslem communities), which as my friend dr. Mangatas pointed out is a wrong term. It should be bigamy, or maybe if Aa Gym decides to have more than 2 wives he can then use the word Polygamy afterward...... Anyway, here is breeding season in the world of frogs. Although it is known that most of tropical frogs breed all the time, but we have seen that for some species breeding occurs only during rainy season. This year we have a very long dry spell, even for West Java especially Bogor where we don't usually have dry season (what we have is a heavy rainy season and a light rainy season). So it's been a while since we found a pair of breeding Rhacophorus reindwartdii . Even though rainy season began early November, we did not hear any male calls in our Faculty of Forestry's arboretum. We have a population of about 20 individ...

Have you ever felt that "something wrong is going to happen, soon ..." Well, it was certainly one of the things that tingling in my head yesterday. It was actually one of those days. I was busy right from the beginning of the day, teaching in the morning and in the afternoon (and blast .. the electricity down .. so I have to cut 1/2 hour of student's presentation ... so typical of PLN), sandwiches between them a department's meeting and a line of students waiting to discuss their projects ... so... in the end you just want to go home on schedule, relax with a cup of hot tea, chats with the children and have a good night sleep. Dark lining already dotted the clouds, so I know for sure that fiery rain will soon come. Fortunately, the university's bus is not really full so I can get a decent seat in front near the driver. Soon, however, thunders crashed and wind howled so fiery ... I was really reluctant to get off from the bus. Still, I get off in front of Jl. Paj...