Our Favorite Zoo

Hello again my dear friends, how was your Christmas celebration there? I hope its as merry as ours :)
We went to my hometown in Siantar on December 24 along with my husband and the kids. One day, we went to the local zoo nearby after attending service at church. My kids love animals and we do not have much time to take them to the zoo in Medan. And the zoo in Siantar is way better than Medan. Below, I share some of pictures when we're at the zoo. I hope you enjoy it :)

There are hundreds of animals here, unfortunatelly I can not capture them one by one. So I choose deer, white tiger, lion, camel, and zebra.

My favorite activity at the zoo is feeding the deer :D
You can just stand close to the cage and wait for the deer to come. They seems to know that you have something tasty to share: boiled peanut. They love it. They will eat it directly from you hard, just be gentle.

The camels and llama are on the same cage. I know that Ilama is spitter and I choosed to stay away from it while trying to capture the camel on its best angle.

Next to the camel cage are African zebras with their beautiful blastered fur. The children love zebras but since the zebra always walk and never stand still, I can not capture them with my kids.

As for the carnivore section, here are white tiger. Actually I saw a lion and a leopard, but it was far away from the front cage and I can not capture them.

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Ironically, yesterday, I read that one of Indonesian's zoo has beed dubbed as The Zoo of Death in Daily Mail UK. You can read the article here. It was a shameful story and contradicted with the zoo we visited in Siantar.

The zoo in Surabaya is called as world's cruellest zoo due to how they treat animals in there. Its a very sad story and the article also show you sickening pictures of them. Animal shouldn't be treated that way. And I hope that Dailymail article will make the local government see and do something about it real soon :(

Selamat Hari Natal 2013

Tinggal lima hari lagi, saudara-saudaraku, kita akan merayakan Natal :) 

Kebanyakan dari kita akan merayakan malam Natal di gereja pada tanggal 24 malam, berkumpul bersama keluarga dan saudara seiman lainnya. Mendengarkan kotbah pendeta tentang kisah kelahiran Yesus di Betlehem dan bagaimana pengaruhnya pada kehidupan kita umat Kristen sampai hari ini. 

Bagiku sendiri, selain ibadah khusus hari Natal, Natal juga berarti kesempatan yang lebih lama bisa berkumpul bersama saudara, menikmati sukacita Natal dan pernak perniknya. Bisa merasakan betapa berbeda nya bulan Desember dibandingkan dengan sebelas bulan lainnya :) dan merasakan syukur karena Tuhan masih mengizinkan kami berkumpul merayakan Natal tahun ini dalam keadaan sehat dan bersuka cita. Sambil berdoa semoga masih ada umur untuk merayakan Natal lagi di tahun depan.

Itulah sukacita. Natal yang sesungguhnya bagiku. Natal memang seharusnya dirayakan bersama keluarga dan bersama saudara-saudara seiman lainnya, berkumpul dan berdoa bersama. Ucapan "Selamat Hari Natal" hanyalah sebagai aksesoris tambahan saja bukan?

Tiap tahun kita selalu melihat masalah yang sama setiap bulan Desember. Mengenai BISA atau TIDAK nya mengucapkan SELAMAT HARI NATAL pada umat Kristen yang sedang merayakannya. Ada pro dan kontra. Baik dari Kristen dan bukan Kristen. Yang jadi pertanyaannya, apakah sebegitu pentingnya bagi kita umat Kristen untuk mendapatkan ucapan Selamat Natal dari non-Kristen? Apakah menjadi masalah kalau mereka tidak mau mengucapkan Selamat Natal kepada kita? Apakah itu mengganggu suasana khidmat ibadah Natal kita? Apakah itu merenggangkan hubungan kekeluargaan kita? 

Jawaban yang pasti: TIDAK ADA PENGARUHNYA!

Ucapan Selamat Natal dari sesama umat Kristen saja sudah cukup bagi kita, tidak perlu memaksa orang yang lain yang tidak ingin untuk mengucapkannya juga. Perayaan Natal kita adalah tentang damai dan sukacita yang kita miliki diantara kita, yang berusaha kita sebarkan ke sekitar kita, agar orang lain juga ikut bersukacita dan merasakan damai nya. Tidak perlu ada pemaksaan apapun kan? :)

Natal tetap bermakna bagi mereka yang merayakannya, dengan atau tanpa ucapan "Selamat Natal" dari mereka yang tidak merayakannya. Seperti Christmas Quote di atas. Mari kita rayakan damai Natal tahun 2013 ini. 

Selamat Hari Natal untuk saudaraku sesama Kristen yang merayakannya. Tuhan Yesus memberkati kita semuanya.

Kematian Dalam Adat Batak

Ada beragam cara manusia menghadapi kematian. Ada yang dirundung kesedihan, ada juga yang memilih untuk menghadapinya dengan suka cita. Saat ini, aku sedang menghadiri acara adat Batak untuk namboru dari pihak suami, yang meninggal hari Kamis pagi kemarin. Untuk yang tidak terbiasa melihat bagaimana adat Batak untuk orang meninggal, mungkin akan heran, karena keluarga yang berduka malah manortor dan bernyanyi. Sedang berduka kok malah bernyanyi.

Ada berbagai jenis acara adat tergantung usia yang meninggal. Kalau yang meninggal masih berusia muda dan belum menikah tentunya berbeda dengan yang meninggal muda tapi sudah menikah. Orang yang meninggal tua tapi masih memiliki anak yang belum menikah, tentu adatnya berbeda juga dengan yang meninggal dalam usia tua dimana semua anaknya sudah menikah dan sudah memiliki cucu bahkan cicit.

Suasana duka akan paling terasa jika yang meninggal masih berusia muda dan belum menikah (anak-anak, remaja, dewasa). Acara adat biasanya hanya sehari dan tanpa musik apapun, bahkan biasanya sepanjang acara selalu terdengar tangisan duka. Sebaliknya, jika yang meninggal sudah berusia tua, semua anaknya sudag menikah dan sudah bercucu (dalam istilah Batak disebut saurmatua), suasana dukacita biasanya tidak terlalu terasa. Acara adat dipenuhi dengan musik, gondang Batak, dan anak-anaknya akan menari atau manortor. Kenapa bisa begitu?

Dalam adat Batak, jika orang tua yang meninggal saurmatua, tidak seharusnya lagi keturunannya merasa terlalu sedih. Rasa sedih karena kehilangan orang yang dikasihi itu tetap ada, tapi perlu tetap bersyukur karena orang tua yang meninggal itu sudah berumur panjang. Sudah berhasil menikahkan semua anaknya bahkan sudah melihat langsung cucu-cucunya. Jadi, secara adat Batak, pencapaian hidupnya sudah amat baik dan mendiang sudah merasakan yang terbaik semasa hidupnya. Dan sudah waktunya dia kembali ke Penciptanya. Maka anak cucunya akan mengadakan acara adat untuk mengantarkan orangtua mereka kembali kepada Tuhan.

Jadi, tidak perlu terlalu heran lagi kalau ada acara adat meninggal dari suku Batak, yang hadir kebanyakan bernyanyi dan menari (selain berdoa tentu saja), karena kalau itu yang terlihat, berarti yang meninggal sudah berusia tua dan anak cucunya sedang mengadakan acara adat yang cocok untuk mengantarkan kepergian orang tua mereka. Bukan sedang berpesta pora karena orang tuanya meninggal loh ya :) Horas!

Christmas Is In The Air

Wooohooooo Christmas is in the air people ^^

In just few days more, we will celebrate it with our beloved family and friends. Churches and houses are full of merrily songs: Joy To The World, Hark The Herald Angel Sings, Jinggle Bells and so on. All of those beautiful songs will be heard in the air this month. Personally, the most beautiful Christmas songs ever for me are from BONEY M. If you have not heard their Christmas songs yet, I really recommend you to hear at least one of them. If you love the traditional kind of Christmas songs, like I do, these are definately the best!

Anyway, as you can see three pictures I post here, these are pictures of our own Christmas tree. We do not have special theme for this year, though I found that Purple has been choosen as colour of this year's Christmas. I prefer the traditional colours instead: Red and Green and never get bored of them yet.

We actually also have Christmas wreath hanging on our front door but I forget to capture it. Maybe tomorrow I will update this post with the picture. In the mean time,  I hope your Christmas preparation there is as merry as we have here. Joy To The World ^^

Running The Red Light

Every morning, I will drop my little girl off to school. It takes me at least one hour to go to school then back home, which I don't mind at all. I choose that school because I know it's worth the distance. And I will take her anywhere as long as it's an excellent quality school, just like this one. I'm sure you moms out there are thinking the same way right now :)

One thing that always makes me amazed every day is that how people sometimes neglect their own safety and endanger other people life as well, by driving carelessly on the street. Accidents can happen and people can get injured by them. The most common dangerous behaviour found on the street is: when drivers pass through an intersection when the red traffic light still on and not even bother to stop. I mean, what were they thinking?

Running the red light is one of the most selfish habits on the street, especially motor-bikers. Indonesia is heaven for motor-bikers. I'm not saying that all motor-bikers are careless and irresponsible, some car drivers can be careless too. I've seen this kind of drivers myself. But the amount of motor-bikers are larger that the four wheels vehicles. That is why Indonesia is a heaven for motor-bikers.

Most of motor-bikers here have taken away the rearview mirrors of their motor-bikes. Usually they keep one on the left only but so many of them feel confident without any rearview mirrors at all. They choose to turn their eyes to the right/left to see if there's vehicles behind them rather than using rearview mirror as safety standard. All they care is the view in front of them only. They can move to the left and then to the right without signs. When the street in front of them looks empty, they will add the speed and move right away like a wounded animal. Racing in a crowded busy street.

When the red traffic light is on, all of them try to move into the first row right behind the stop line by slipping between the stopped cars, which waiting for the light to turn green, and push their motor-bikes to the front row. Why do they do that? Why not just stop behind vehicles in front of them and wait until the light turns green? The answer is because most of them are trying to run the red light!

Sometimes, the intersection might appear empty. But one thing for sure, the green traffic light is still on from the other directions right? What if suddenly a huge truck pass by from the opposite direction with a high speed just when you decide to run the red light? Disaster! Vehicle in high speed usually unable to stop right away and you, my dear careless biker, my lose your own life and bring other people too! Innocent people who accidently stop their vehicles not far from the intersection traffic light. They can get injured too due to your careless behaviour!

Just wait for the light to turn green. It's not like you are going to wait for hours, right? Just a few minutes and then you can drive again. These few minutes in the street are worth your life and other people as well. So many people die due to traffic accidents every year. Do not put yourself into the list. Traffic lights are there for a reason, please use it wisely.

Everybody wants to arrive in where ever places they're going to as soon as possible but obviously running the red light is not a solution! Be responsible on the street because it's not only your own life is on risk, but other people life as well. Drive safely!

Vulcanic ashes from Mount Sinabung in Medan

When I woke up this morning, I saw something stranges has happened since last night. I opened the window and I saw a quite thick layer of dusts on my neighbour's roof (I was on my house's second floor). I went outside the my house to find out what's happened right away. In my front yard, I found the same kind of dusts also covering all my plants including my car. Unfortunately, my car is WHITE!  It's been raining all night long and  I must parked my car outside (unfortunately again) since my husband is out of town and he parked his car inside. So his car is safe and mine is a mess *sigh

I looked closer to the dusts. Soft grey with soft texture just like ashes from cigarette. And its all over the place. And then I found out that it was actually volcanic ashes from Mount Sinabung which has been frequently errupted (minor erruptions) these couple of weeks.
Mount Sinabung is located in Karo Regency, North Sumatra, Indonesia which is about 3 hours from our place, Medan, which actually is far enough. Yet the wind apprently succeed to bring the ashes all way down to Medan.

Almost every car we found on the street covered in ashes as well and it's (as I said before) strange.....
Like this car, I found when parking in front of a restaurant

Mount Sinabung is actually beautiful especially on a clear day. Two places near it are familiar with tourists, Brastagi and Kabanjahe. Two beautiful places with the pleasant mountain air. I am sure that those places will look quite different right now, covered in vulcanic ashes which I'm sure will be thicker than we have here. I hope Mount Sinabung will be just fine and one day we will be able to see it again.

My iPad, iOS 7 and the Recovery Mode

Are you iPad users just like me? Have you upgraded to Ios 7 then? If so, how is the download process works for your iPad then, is it done successfully? If so, you are so lucky then.

My iPad 3 works just fine for me. I got it from my beloved and generous hubby LoL and got excited ever since. And guess what, my very first app is Hay Day! Well, I'm not proud of it since many of you will consider that it sound worthless to have an iPad just to play Hay Day. Hey! I love games. Too bad I can not find Farmville here. LoL. So, for several months, I use my iPad for nothing but Hayday and social network such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Until I got bored and tried to find something new to work with my iPad. And that was the beginning of disaster!

I realized that I have three blogs that have been sadly abandoned for about half a year or more due to my hectic schedule. I usually update my blog using laptop which means I need to spend more time sitting in front of my desk to write. I hate to bring laptop everywhere. And time is something i don't have! My laptop then can only sleep in my desk as well as my blogs. This iPad then wakes me up, that that I can easily update my blog without having to sit in front of my desk again. Yeay! I downloaded the Blogger app to get things even more easily.

As usual, I always try to put pictures in almost every posts I write. When I tried to upload pictures, there was a notification show up that I need to upgrade my iPad in order to continue. So I think, why not? The newest version is usually the better one, right. Then I go to the setting section and decided to upgrade to ios 7 and downloaded it OTA (Over The Air) by using Wi-Fi connection. A VERY BAD DECISION that I will always regret, even until now! The download process took forever. Almost eight hours! I was so glad that the download process finally over in the evening. Only to find out that there was something wrong with the process and my iPad ended in Recovery Mode. The screen displayed the iTunes image and asked me to connect to iTunes. In this recovery mode, I was unable to open anything in my iPad. I have to connect to iTunes to exit the recovery mode.

Image credit: http://datas-recovery.com

I connected it with iTunes in hubby's Macbook and tried to recover the iPad software and it took forever too. Seven hours! And the result is: NOTHING! My iPad is still in recovery mode. It was a very stressfull days if I recall. I Google everything about this all night long since I could not sleep. Actually, I almost cried and scream! But there is a good point  i got during my research. I found so many post and stuff about iPad, tips and tricks, softwares, etc. And then I found out about Tiny Umbrella, a software that can help younto exit the recovery mode. I downloaded it too and follow the instructions and nothing happened. The only way I can imagine is to bring my iPad to IBox. Nothing else! And its frustrated me so much.

At last, I tried my one last luck to recover using iTunes again, altough it already failed before. I thought about leaving the process all night long when I go to sleep. I had nothing to lose. Suddenly, something happened. As soon as the recovery process started, the iTunes logo on my screen dissapear. The apple logo appear along with the dowloading bar, as if the iPad is in the recovery process. Then in the next 10 minutes, my iPad screen back to normal condition complete with the iOs 7 succesfully installed. I was so surprised! I never wished that the iOs 7 will successfully installed after everything I did to exit the recovery mode. But i was wrong. The ios 7 has been successfully installed and my iPad works like brand new. I am a lucky person and I found out about it in a hard way. I make a promise to myself that I will never try to download any kind of iOs again ever. This is my first and last stressfull experience about this. As long as my iPad works just fine, there is no need to change anything. Maybe next time I will not be this lucky *sweatdrop*

Well, how about you? Have you experienced the same thing with me?

Gundaling, Tanah Karo nan semrawut

Sebagai penghuni perkotaan yang sumpek dan penuh polusi, nggak banyak pilihan yang tersedia sebagai tempat refreshing keluarga yang termasuk kategori family friendly. Paling banter cuma bisa masuk mall A, atau toko buku B atau kolam renang C. Yang lama-lama cukup bikin bosan. Kita juga butuh tanah terbuka hijau yang luas, tanpa ada bangunan-bangunan tinggi yang mengganggu pemandangan. Untuk pilihan yang ini hanya ada satu solusi: ke luar kota.

Keluargaku tinggal di kota Medan. Ada beberapa alternatif pilihan yang menarik untuk wisata alam yang jaraknya hanya beberapa jam dari kota. Pilihan yang tak pernah basi pastilah ke Tanah Karo. Seperti Brastagi dan Kabanjahe. Tapi lebih enak di Brastagi sebenarnya. Karena lebih seperti kota wisata.

Kalau ke Brastagi, biasanya kita nggak pernag melewatkan Gundaling. Gundaling ini merupakan spot yang lebih tinggi, dimana kita bisa melihat kota Brastagi di bawahnya. Disini biasanya tempat wisatawan yang ingin merasakan naik kuda ataupun naik sado. Dengan beberapa puluh ribu rupiah, kita sudah diajak naik kuda mengelilingi Gundaling. Tempat ini tak pernah sepi pengunjung.

Kunjungan kami yang terbaru kesana adalah hari ini. Setelah beberapa bulan tidak ke Brastagi. Dan ada yang mengecewakan. Memang seperti biasa wisatawan yang datang akan dikenakan biaya retribusi di pintu masuk. Kami membayar 10 ribu untuk satu mobil berisi 4 orang. Biasanya, hanya itulah pungutan yang diberlakukan, tidak ada lagi pungutan apapun lagi di dalam.

Tapi begitu di dalam, mobil dihentikan oleh seorang pria yang memakai baju warna coklat khas PNS  yang memegang  segepok kertas seperti kwitansi. Kami diminta membayar 5000 lagi untuk retribusi parkir, yang sebenarnya cukup aneh. Dan kami tidak mendapat kwitansi untuk retribusi ini. Bagaimana kalo kami hanya ingin berkeliling saja dan tidak berniat untuk berhenti dan parkir. Masa iya harus bayar parkir juga? Dan memang kami hanya berkeliling saja, tidak berhenti untuk parkir.

Begitu selesai berkeliling dan melewati pintu masuk tadi yang juga berfungsi sebagai pintu keluar, mobil dihentikan lagi. Kali ini muncul pria berpakaian biasa yang juga memegang segepok kertas seperti kwitansi. Ternyata dia juga meminta retribusi lagi sebesar 5000 rupiah. Yah kita pasti heran, kan barusan tadi sudah bayar. Dan kita keliling juga cuma sekitar 10 menitan aja, karena Wilayah Gundaling ini juga kecil kok. Dia bilang yang tadi itu cuma untuk retribusi masuk aja, yang ini untuk parkir. Aje gileee luuu...

Masak retribusi dikutip 2x hanya untuk keliling jalan biasa yang berlubang-lubang seperti itu?? 

Yang jelas kami menolak membayar. Jangan-jangan orang lokal sini menganggap semua wisatawan itu pohon uang yang nggak punya otak ya? Kok kesannya seperti penipuan begitu. Tidak bisa dipastikan kalau kutipan ini resmi. Karena jelas-jelas mobil yang di depan kami juga menolak membayar. Dan si pengutip nggak bisa ngomong apa-apa untuk melawan argumentasi kami.

Sangat disayangkan kalau pengelolaan daerah wisata Gundaling ini jadi semrawut dan penuh pungutan liar seperti ini. Kalau tidak ada perubahan juga, pasti wisatawan yang berkunjung akan semakin sedikit. Karena pemda tidak bisa memberikan rasa aman bagi pendatang. Karena bukan besarnya jumlah rupiah yang menjadi masalah, tapi  retribusi itu resmi atau pungutan liar suka-suka dari warga setempat. Semakin  banyak pungutan liarnya, semakin jeleklah kredibilitas tempat wisata itu di mata pengunjung. Sungguh disayangkan..