Is there anyone of you who do not know Bali? 

Well,, Bali maybe is the most famous island in Indonesia. Sometime ago, Bali even is more popular than Indonesia itself. If people were asked where is Indonesia, maybe they would shook their head. But if the question is about Bali, who is in the world doesn't know? Hehehehe

Bali is well-known for its beautiful scenery of nature and traditional culture. Most of its people is Hinduism. Therefore, we can find a lot of beautiful Hinduism temple there. There are so many religion rituals celebrated there every year such as Nyepi, Galungan, and Kuningan.

The traditional culture is also enchanting. We can enjoy the traditional dances like Barong dance, Kecak dance, and many others.

Do you like a beach? Sunset? Bali has many beautiful beaches and you can enjoy the sea air, white sand, surfing, and also sunrise and sunset :D

I was lucky to get a chance for my second visiting to Bali, and I didn't and won't be boring to visit Bali. However, Bali is not the only one beautiful island in Indonesia. We still have another beautiful islands to visit, such as Lombok, Flores, Timor, Kalimantan, and even Papua.

So, if you get a chance to visit Indonesia, don't forget to visit Bali, and another islands in Indonesia. :D

Best Regard

Ria Sudibyo ^ ^

It was tuesday, June 7, 2011, when I was back from my college and arrived in my boarding house. I entered my room and found a postcard lying in the floor. Oh wow, postcard from my friend in USA had arrived. I was so delight and then soon sent an email to him as a thankful saying.

Here the pictures of my postcard ^_^

The translate message :

Hello Ria!

This is the chapel I told you before (cadet chapel of US air force academy) . The inside is cool, right? It supposed can be placed by approximately 1200 persons!

Good luck for your final exams in this semester! Cheers!

The postcard was from my friend, my senior, who take a master degree in USA. And I wish.... I can follow his trace, I want to continue my study abroad... Aaaaaa

I keep the postcard safe in my room, it likes a "treasure", hehe, for me.. And I just be encouraged to give more struggle in my study.. Hmm, thanks to Feisal for sending the postcard..

Have you received a gift or something that really meaningful and what's the meaning for you? Just feel free to share it :D

Last week I joined my class field lecture in Pacitan, East Java for a week. Well, we had so much activity to did and so less time for a rest. For each day we just had approximately 4 hours to sleep. We had to wake up at 5 a.m, and as soon as went to take a bath. If you're late, you had to wait in long queue, because just there were 4 bathrooms for approximately 50 persons,, hahaha..

After breakfast, at 7 a.m, we had to left our basecamp and went to field we had to survey. We practice different methods for each day. You know, we use physics applications to investigate the structure of inner earth (you can guess what major study I take, :D)

Along time from 7 a.m until 4.30 p.m we worked in field and we came back to our basecamp. Took a bath, and we continued our work to processed the datas we got from our measuring that day. And at 8 p.m all of processing data have to be finished yet and presentation session was began. Every groups with each methods have to report their results and continued with discussion. 

It was so night when we finished our report. Then we still had to discussed for our practicum the next day. And everything were finished in very early morning and  we went to bed at 1 a.m. Very tired and it was not pleased if you realized that you had to wake up 4 hours then. And it continued for 6 days. Hohoho. In a last day even I didn't sleep at all because we had to finished our last report.

I don't want to sigh about my field lecture. I enjoyed it,it made a different memory. Although it was hard but it became enjoyable because we did it together, helping and be helped. That's the point! Everything will be easier if we do it together. 

And after the field lecture finished, we still had another homeworks, papers to be finished. And life's still going on. Remember that we never be alone, that we still have anyone else who can help and to be helped. Family, friends, we're not alone.

Because life's beautiful, and will be more beautiful if we can share with each other..

Wayang is one of Javanese culture, and it has many forms too ,like wayang kulit, wayang golek, wayang wong, etc. But now I want to tell you about wayang kulit, a kind of wayang from Central Java. 

Wayang kulit is a tradisional puppet made from buffalo's leathers. It's best known in Central Java, East Java, and Bali. It's usually used for a traditional puppet theater,always be held at night, and performed by a "dalang", or a story teller. The story of wayang is based on Mahabaratha and Ramayana epic. In past, wayang used to spread Hinduism and then Muslim religion. 

Wayang kulit was performed by shadow casts in a cotton screen and an oil lamp, but now the source of light is produced by using a halogen electric lamp.

wayang kulit as seen as from shadow side

a set of wayang kulit's figures 

So if you visit Indonesia, especially Java, don't forget to watch wayang kulit's performances. 

Yesterday, on Friday March,11th 2011, there was big earthquake happened twice in Japan for about 8.8 and 7.9 ritcher scale, far stronger than the one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand. And even made a powerful tsunami swept across the large area of North Japan. About more than 300 people died and more than 500 people are missing . Let us pray for them..

So what is earthquake? Why it can be happened and what's it caused by?

As you know,our earth is very complex. Our earth is consists of core (including inner core and outer core), mantle, and crust. Crust is divided into many plates that moving each other. There are two kind of plate, continental plate and ocean plate.. You can look at below picture to see the dividing.

So when one plate that has more density was subducted or moving below another plate, and it has reached it's critical elasticity, it will fracture. The fracture will make earthquake. Like what happened in Japan, Pasific plate moving to west and has subducted below Eurasian plate,finally fracture and made a big earthquake. You can notice the areas in the edges of every plates, they are active tectonic areas, sign by a lot of volcanoes there and so often earthquake happened. It also called as "ring of fire", in the picture above is marked by a lot of red dots. 

My beloved country, Indonesia, also included in "ring of fire", because it's located in the meeting of three plates, Eurasian plate, Indo-Australia plate, and Pasific plate (it's called as "triple junction"). So I can say that earthquake is happened in around of Indonesia everyday. And it also has a lot of active volcanoes because of the subduction.

Music has many genres and has many forms too. Music is a universal language that can express a lot of human feelings. Happiness, sadness, thanksgiving, hope, love, and even for worship. We can talk by music, we can share our feeling by music too.

When I joined in my university's choir 2 years ago, I began to learn and love classical songs. My university choir was based on classical songs ( but now it's not longer anymore and I was sad when I heard it). Classical songs such as sacra music is kind of high quality and very difficult songs to sing. I remember when I still a new member in my university's choir, although I take sopran part, I got difficulty to reach the high notes. A song we sang, O Magnum Mysterium (by Thomas Luis de Victoria), was very difficult song with high range voices and needs long breathe to sing it, especially in the song's ending.

Now I'm not longer being an active member in my university's choir because of my activity in my campus, but I still love to sing and listen a lot of classical songs. But besides classical song, I like pop and jazz songs too..

This is a video of my favorite song, For the Beauty of The Earth by John Rutter. I love this song so much, and it's one of my favorite song ^ ^

For the Beauty of The Earth

So what's the meaning of music for you? What's kind of music do you like and why you like it?