Cerita Umi Bakrie

People sometimes put their milestone on New Year’s Eve. I put mine on the New Year Eve and on the celebration day of marking the end of fasting month or Ramadhan (Lebaran - , surely it is not a word based on Arabic, more likely coming from Javanese). The first, in term of career or professional development and the latter usually to rethink my personal experience. For me, both times is great time to review what I had done all year: What gained, what lost, regret, failure, success, next step, etc. Granted, the year between lebaran it is not the same length like the usual year we use nowadays (that’s why several years ago we experience 2 Ramadhan in a year), however, knowing that a year has passed you by surely worth for a stop and re-think the way you are planning to walk. Lebaran is a time for family, just like Christmas for the Christian, it is also reunion time – a once in a year meeting with extended family members with whom you will not see again until the next lebaran (if you are...

My schedule for today is writing a paper to be presented at the Indonesian Herpetologist Seminar next month. Too bad … within minutes I got lost … so much data, got confused and … the SPSS decide to freeze ….! So instead of working, I browse. Starting with reading Koki ( a community blog part of Kompas), moving to Wimar Witoelar blog, hopping to the Naked Traveller, then checking out on A. Fatih Syuhud blog and then decided to open google. Actually, I started by googling some research papers … just to make amend of wasting my time in the internet. Somehow instead of putting amphibian or something like that I ended up putting one of my friend’s names back in old Townsville day. Lo and behold … I got his wife blog! It’s sure nice to know good things about my old friend Doug Woodhams. I remember him as a very young postgraduate student (got his PhD at about 24 yrs – in his recent photograph in his wife’s blog he looked much more mature), very smart and very religious (it was the fir...

It was one of the worst imaginable nights I ever felt in the field. I was in Cibeureum, Mount Gede National Park for 2 days. My team has already camped there for 3 days when I arrived in the first day of January 2007 with Lutfi, Nuryani and Dian. Wempy's team (Inggar, Lubis, Boby) has surveyed Surya Kencana (around 2300m asl) for 4 days before returning below to Cibeureum and Telaga Warna (around (1300 m asl) and joined Fitri's team around Christmas. The first night, I joined Fitri's team and do some search on terrestrial transect near the walking bridge. We found three Leptophryne cruentata below the bridge. I was so happy. That night after the survey, wind began to howl. When we woke up in the morning, all our gear that was left outside was scattered all over the place. The day passed quickly, we even managed to find a secluded area where we found lots of L.cruentata ! Then night came, along with its fierce wind. All trees were swaying dangerously, and we knew for s...

It was nearly midday when suddenly Fery brought me three bleeding toad ( Leptophryne cruentata ) in separate bags. "Where did get them?" asked me curiously. It was rare to find them, least at all during the day. Later I learnt that after finding some tadpoles in the nearby waterfalls three of my students Fery, Yazid and Lubis decide to search further. Bingo, in one of the waterfall they found lots of toad well hiding in moss covered rock crevices. So, we (I, Inggar, Wempy, Neneng and Fitri) decided to come along, guided by Lubis . Jeez, it was really cold! The water temperature is around 14 degress Celcius and with all the water spray from the falls it is impossible to stay dry. But, it was WORTH it! Congratulations girls and boys! We found their home base!