Alfie

Preparing for the baby, that is the reason for the long absence of posting. Yes, Anna and I have been occupied by the welcoming of our first baby, Alfie. Our doctors predicted August 15 as Alfie’s birth day, but he chose to come out 3 days later.

Friends and families, please meet Alfie Shan Patunru, the little being who carries our genes. "Alfie" is a variant of alpha or of alif – both indicate “first”. "Shan" is a Mandarin of "mountain". Alfie was born 3.77 kilograms and 51 centimeters with normal delivery. His mother was well, despite the extra pain from vacuum pump. Thank you, God for the added joy to the family.

And there the new life has begun. We have done things to home to welcome the new comer. The bedroom now looks even more compact with a new colorful cabinet for Alfie’s stuff – our home decorator might be disappointed to know that his design had to be significantly altered, but Alfie can explain.

Anna has prepared a stack of music for Alfie. Of course she’s biased toward classics, and me jazz. But we believe Alfie has the right to his own bias. So we play him everything. From Bach to Chopin, from Ella to Diana Krall, from Titik Puspa to Tina Toon -- everything. As it turns out, Alfie seems to like ... ABBA and Fleetwood Mac! Whatever you say, Alfie...

update on the mud

The last two days newspaper headlines read:

• The mud has overflowed one of high school in Porong up to its top!
• No solution on how to stop the spurt out of the mud nor to get rid of it
• The temporary dam was broken and around 6000 people must be evacuated
• Need another 3 months to handle the mud (you think so? No, I don’t)

People who claim yourselves as Government, now you can should do something. Where are you?

oh my mud!

OK, that’s it! Enough reading the news everyday about the Lapindo Brantas’s mud that messes up people live in Sidoarjo, East Java.

It’s been almost 3 months since the hydrogen sulfide gas mixed with ammonia and hot mud spurted out over the residential area in Porong and over Surabaya-Gempol highway. Today, it is reported, the highway is closed due to the high risk of the mud that is already 4 meters high to be overflowed to the road. Companies located around the mud area have lost billion rupiahs, not to mention other companies that have to transport their products through this highway. Also, don’t forget, the lives of people whose house have been flooded since the first day of the spurt.

What would have happened if the company is not Lapindo, but Newmont or Freeport? Still remember couple of months ago when people brutally demonstrated in front of Freeport head office in Jakarta accusing the company of polluting the environment?