Our Church Youth Choir

Minggu, paduan suara pemuda dan remaja GII, mempersembahkan sebuah pujian berjudul, "Jadilah Saksi Karna NamaNya". It's pretty good song. They were not in their full team, because some members were on their summer vacation. Following are some of the photos I took.

GII Youth Choir

GII Youth Choir

Dan lirik lagunya sbb:

Dengan kaki, berjalan yang benar
Dengan tangan, gunakan yang benar
Mata, telinga, semua puji Tuhan

Dengan mulut, berkatalah jujur
Dengan hati, berbuatlah benar
Jadikan tubuhmu muliakan Tuhan

Hari-hari banyaklah cobaan
Hadapilah dengan kuat iman
Jaga diri, jangan sampai kau tersesat

Ada kuasa di dalam darah-Nya
Jangan ragu, hadapilah dunia
Jadilah saksi kar'na nama-Nya

Piknik Jemaat GII 2008

Setiap tahun, GII mengadakan piknik jemaat. Di piknik ini, semua jemaat berkumpul untuk bersekutu, makan, dan main.

Tahun ini, piknik jemaat diadakan di Belcarra Bay di ujung Coquitlam. And thanks to Indonesia's tradition of gummy clock (jam karet), koordinator Ario memutuskan untuk mengumumkan kalo waktu kumpul itu jam 10 (acara mulai jam 11). Good decision.

Cik Effie, Jocelyn, and Olivia -- lagi taking care of Jocelyn

Justin and Jocelyn lagi melihat hasil foto yang diambil sebelumnya

Justin, Jocelyn, dan Olivia -- lagi mainan kamera

Karen dan Audrey -- berusaha duduk di kursi kayu terus

Jocelyn lagi pose cute (what'cha looking at?)

The boys

Yuli, Audrey, dan Olivia bersama dengan murid murid Sekolah Minggu

Tante-tante lagi duduk-duduk menunggu mulainya persekutuan

Sekitar jam 11, persekutuan pun dimulai. Puji-pujian dipimpin oleh cik Vivi. Banyak lagu canon yang dipilih, jadi dalam waktu singkat nyanyian pun berubah menjadi ajang tanding teriak.. Sunday School kids versus Pemuda.

Cik Vivi memimpin puji-pujian, diiringi oleh Liong dan Cik Sofi on guitar

Inilah suasana persekutuan -- kasihan yah.. yang MC dicuekin..

James and Peter

With Christ in the vessel ...

Puji-pujian dilanjutkan dengan renungan singkat oleh Pak Stef. Memakai mega phone, of course.

Pak Stef sedang menyampaikan renungan di samping danau

Sambil menunggu lunch yang sedang disiapkan oleh tim Tante Eva dkk, kita pun bermain permainan People to People, courtesy of Jessica.

Salah satu kembar dan bapaknya menjadi partner awal saat bermain People to People

Hand to hand... check!
What's next? What's next?

Hey.. you are supposed to join in People to People, where are you going?

Setelah itu, acara yang dinanti-nantikan pun mulai: LUNCH!

Tapi berhubung beberapa pemuda kita sangat considerate terhadap orang (yang lebih) tua dan anak-anak, maka mereka pun mengalah antrian. Sebagai gantinya, untuk melupakan rasa lapar sementara, mereka sibuk mengagumi keindahan alam sambil berpose untuk difoto. Orang-orang yang sangat considerate itu ada dalam foto-foto berikut ini...

Olivia, Jason, Sylvi, Yuli, Jimmy (dan Chris, our photographer)

Reach for the star.. Ouch, Jason, you step on me!

Let's try it once more.. JUMP!

Out of my way!

Jumping Buddha!

After lunch, saatnya bermain game. Ada game buat anak Sunday School, dan ada game juga buat orang dewasa. Tapi game paling seru yang membuat tua-muda cewek-cowok melupakan kantuk mereka (akibat kekenyangan) adalah.... ... Tarik Tambang! (Of course... kita kan orang Indo asli ^_^)

Pemuda, melawan...

Bapak-Bapak (wow... and this group was winning!)
Pak Stef terlihat tertidur di rumput di samping kiri gambar ini

Hoooiii... kalo tertawa terus, mana ada tenaga, Bung?

Next game was reserved for kids only (unfortunately.. it looked really fun!). Balap Karung!! (Ahhh.. jadi teringat masa kecil saya yang bahagia sekali.. setiap hari Paskah pasti ada lomba antar kelas di Sekolah Minggu, dan Balap Karung termasuk salah satu yang paling seru!).

"I have to run in THIS?!?!"

You can jump, but I can jump higher!

Oops... I dropped my pants.. I mean my karung.. oh no!

Jump with the wind..

Saya tidak ingat siapa saja yang menang. Cuma mengingat kalo semuanya tertawa bahagia pada akhirnya. Oh well, that's the important thing, right?

Berikut ini adalah random pictures selama Piknik.

Nathan - trying to pull himself up by grabbing the top of his head

Chanaldy - belajar surfing di atas tali buat Tarik Tambang

Jessica, Karen, and Audrey - lagi menyanyikan lagu-lagu cinta untuk menghibur pemirsa setia

Cik Deiby sekeluarga - menatap masa depan yang cerah dan penuh harapan

Olivia, Melvin, dan Yuli - bubbles are beautiful

Melvin - wow.. it's magic!

Olive dan Sylvi -- this is fun

Audrey - hey, is that a corn chips?

Olive - okay, let's fold our hands and make a wish...

Andrew and Jason -- Psssttt.. let me whisper you a secret...

Segitulah laporan picnic jemaat GII tahun ini.

Heat Wave

It was very hot today, I believe it's around 21° C. We took this oppurtunity to do was our car and clean the garage :) The garage was very dirty due to sticky dirt carried over from winter time.

Very hot day in our area

We borrowed Pak Stef's pressure washer for washing our car and cleaning the garage. We are planning to buy one, because it proofs to be very useful when cleaning sticky dirt in our garage.

Olivia was playing with the pressure washer

The Cleaned Hybrid

Night view from our backyard

It's night time now, time to sleep :)

Adobe Air - Keyboard Event in Fullscreen Mode

Recently, I get error when launching my custom movie browser. It says:

“This application requires a version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author”

I go to Adobe site to download the latest AIR and also the latest AIR SDK for Flash. After I install everything, I open Flash and start generating the new AIR installer for my application.

I get error message when trying to install the application. The error says:

"The application could not be installed because the AIR file is damaged. Try obtaining a new AIR file from the publisher."

Ehm ... very weird, I am the publisher and I just generate the installer file. I try generating new installer several times but no luck. I uninstall AIR and reinstall it again, and it works !!! Weird ...

Next problem I encounter is that my program does not allow me to trigger KeyboardEvent while I am in fullscreen mode. The KeyboardEvent is working fine if I am not in fullscreen mode. This reminds me of restriction I encountered in Flash AS 3.0. It is very confusing, it still worked the last time I make changes to my application, which is about two months ago.

Then, after googling around, I find that Adobe changes the AIR API, I need to set display state to FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE instead of FULL_SCREEN only to allow KeyboardEvent in fullscreen mode.

stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE;

Two hours wasted trying to solve this problem :)

Hard Drive Failed

This last weekend was a bit crazy. I woke up Saturday finding that one of our server drive failed. This drive contained all photos and various Coniques projects, and I haven't had chance to perform backup in the last 6 months. It seems that there is power spiked the night before that caused the break power circuitry in the USB external enclosure.

I tried to read the drive by connecting it to my workstation through SATA cable. No luck. Windows still did not assign any drive letter to the drive. I opened Disk Management console from Control Panel and found that Windows successfully detected the hard drive. The drive status is healthy and online as well. However, I still have no luck accessing it. It seems that there is something wrong with the drive partition.

I then started googling around to find way for recovering partition and found a program by EaseUS, Data Recovery Wizard. I used it to perform search for lost data in the drive, the search took about 8 hours. The program successfully found all the files and we have to buy additional drive to dump all of the recovered data which took additional 20 hours.

Recovering Process

Now, the drive is back online, and I start to perform backup right away. I will consider adding redundant drive that will mirror the main drive in the future.

New Toy

I finally got my first constant 2.8 aperture wide angle zoom lens. I have been doing a lot of thinking on which 2.8 lens I should get. I have considered Nikkor 17-55 DX or the new 14-24, but they are very pricey. I need to allocate my budget for other things in life as well. After reading a lot of reviews, I finally decided to buy Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens. The price is only about 1/3 of those two Nikkor lenses, and the performance is really good based on review by Thom Hogan and SLR Gear.

However, cheap stuff always comes with drawbacks. The Tamron casing is plastic, and for sure it is not as robust as the expensive Nikkor.

I got this lens at very decent price in Indonesia, it cost about $370 which is cheaper compare to price in Canada; however, it only comes with 1 year warranty. I also find out that price of camera equipments are cheaper in Indonesia compare to Canada.

Tamron 17-50, taken with Nikkor 60 2.8

Tamron 17-50, taken with Nikkor 60 2.8

Following are some photos I took using my new lens.

Sample Doraemon Shot

I am looking forward to use this lens as my main lens. I have left my Nikkor 18-70 in the hand of my brother :)

Goodbye Makassar

I have finally left my hometown Makassar. The feeling is mixed, I am happy to start a new journey with my wife, but at the same time, I also miss our family in Indonesia. Following is picture I took two days before I left Makassar city. It is taken from Taman Bahari, Pantai Losari, overviewing cityscape instead of the beach.

Makassar Cityscape

There are two main buildings shown in picture. The first one on the left is Stella Maris Hospital (Rumah Sakit Stella Maris). It is one of the well known hospital in Makassar. Another one on the right is Imperial Arya Duta Hotel. The hotel is not there yet when I still live in Makassar (i.e. ~13 years ago). Time did fly very fast. The hotel is 5 star hotel overlooking Losari Beach (Pantai Losari). Viewing sunset from the top of this hotel must be amazing, even though I haven't tried it yet :)