Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Kit

My Sunday project: making a Recesky Twin Lens Reflex camera. After a struggle with the shutter knot, I finally finished it with the help of SUPER GLUE!

Night Hike

So, hi.

I had my another volunteer hours again by working with the Environmental Group in my community. They’re pretty awesome kids to hang with, and I’m glad I’m in it.

So, this night, we were supposedly helping the library to work with their Night Hike project, where you walk in the woods at night, try to find for traces of animal footprints and the other stuff. It’s pretty fun—from what I imagined.

We tried to walk through the trail first before they came to put all the clues and traces of footprints—because it would take ages to find the real one—and then coming back to the library. We saw a bunch group of young girls—around six or seven years old—and their mothers—and some fathers.
I was pretty much shocked and didn’t expect myself to see that whole lot of people to work with.

Basically, they’re all so cute and adorable, like your ideal of little six years old American girl in their scout group. The trail was so far so good because it’s pretty obvious and I still remembered.

Then.
Half and an hour passed. My flashlight was dimming (well it’s actually dimming for the whole walk), although I had some adorable girls that tried to cling to me and they had these super excellent working flashlights, so I tried to keep them near me. The trail started to get smaller, and I wasn’t sure whether I walked in the right path. And the girls started to ask questions like,

“What if we’re lost?”
“No, we won’t. Since you have me.”
“Yeah, but I was just wondering if we’re lost…”
“…”

And the other stuff. One of the mothers asked me how long it’s going to take more, and I wasn’t sure myself. I mean, it was pitch black, I wasn’t sure how long we’ve been walking, and I wasn’t sure where we were at that time.

I told her that probably we’re going to have another 15 minutes before we finish, and then she started to tell me that they didn’t know that it’s going to be that long since it passed their bedtime. When I asked them about the bedtime, all of the girls said they sleep at 8pm.

Well, probably you should just use my bedtime.

The road started to get confusing, and the distance between each clue started to get farther and farther, which made me a bit worried. I thought I was going to cry. What if we’re lost? What if they’re going to sue me since I’m not an American citizen and I know nothing about the park? What if they thought I’m a professional and when they know I am not, they’re gonna hate me?

Another What-If’s condition that I don’t really need to think about. Hem.

And finally,
We arrived. We’re finished.

All of the mothers were in hurry to go back to the library since it passed their bedtime—which they tried to walk in front of me, the leader, instead. We rushed back to the library. They were ahead over me and then made a circle to have some snacks. The lady that talked about the bedtime asked me whether I want to join their goldfish snack time, and I unwillinglypassed it. After that, I bid farewell to them, didn’t get a chance to say where I came from though, but I’m glad they’re happy.

And it seems that I got the biggest group ever—15 people or so!
Means I have the right to feel a bit nervous.
Man, hard night.

Children Climate Forum Copenhagen

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Delegations from around the world held the shout-out globe. I was inside the crowd.

In 2009, UNICEF cooperated with UNFCCC held the first climate forum for children, as a pre-event for COP15, a special meeting for our world leaders to make decision and solutions about what will we do as a human for this Earth’s sake.

I represented Indonesia for the first time, with two other colleagues, one from Jakarta (currently studying in a college at Australia) and other came from Bali (currently studying in a college). I went there as the youngest one, along with our chaperon, the Ministry of Environment’s representative, Ms. Aini. The event was held from 28th November until 5th December 2009, mostly indoor, at one of the most historical building in Copenhagen, the City Hall of Copenhagen. This forum was held in the middle city of Copenhagen, which was quite far from the COP15’s place itself.

There were 44 countries which sent usually three children as their representatives, mostly from 15 until 17 years old. Indonesia and Vietnam were the only countries which represented South East Asia. India, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea also represented Asia in this forum.

This forum was actually more similar like classes in college. We chose what subject (in this case, what problem) we desired, and we attended classes which discuss about the matters. For this forum, we discussed about matters which would affect our Climate, because we knew that Climate Change is one of the hottest issues around the world, and we knew, as the children of the world, we should take actions along with our leaders. Mostly to encourage our leaders to make a more wise decision rather than argue about each country’s matter.

Because I lived and grew up in Kalimantan, I chose matters which were the base one, such as forestry, biodiversity, etc. rather than population in a city, industry pollution, etc. Those classes were side one, because we had to choose the main team or group we wanted to be involved, and I chose the CAP (Climate Ambassador Program) team. In CAP, we were the team-matchmakers; we connected countries which have same issues, so they’ll figure other solutions and share what they had. Also, we made a toolkit for CAP, which has many great ideas about how to solve our community’s problems, individually and with our teammates back in the country. Other teams worked with their own tasks, so here, we also learned how to be a part of a team where you need to learn how to work together, but still become an active or dominant one, so you’ll make your voice being heard.

Aside from my main team, I joined forestry, which discussed about problems about our forest in the world, and how to solve those problems, again, individually or in groups. I joined Biodiversity class, and got a chance to represent the class in front of everybody to send what we had discussed in class. Gladly, I got great responses about what I’ve said, and this was a great start for us, the Indonesians, to be heard.

Luckily, Indonesia was one of the teams which got an overwhelming opportunity to visit the Copenhagen Zoo for our external visit. I saw some animals which I couldn’t here in Indonesia, such as penguins. We also got a chance for being interviewed by a youth-paper, and they encouraged us to make the same one here, in Indonesia. It was a great trip, because other teams probably went to companies which maybe weren’t as fun as ours, or went to a trip by boat, which is very unfavorable for those teams to have such a ride in the end of the year’s season, winter. I was and I am really glad that I am an Indonesian.

164 delegates around the world worked together to achieve our main goal: to pursue the world leaders and convince them to make better decisions about what the world have to do to prevent the Climate Change and to stop it as fast as we could, also to convince them that there are more than 100 youths who are ready and already made changes in our community, and we dare our leaders to do the same thing, for the earth and human’s sakes. Mostly, our main project was to make a declaration which be given to the COP15’s president. Other teams, such as my team, CAP, worked for the ambassadors’ toolkit, tools they could use to make project back home. We, as the representatives of our countries, would be Climate Ambassadors, the one who would take steps and break the silence to make changes.

In the last night, we had a great Cultural Night, when each country should represented local performances in their country, but sadly, Indonesia didn’t show any attractions, because of our time and lack of experiences. But the night was amazingly wonderful, and I didn’t regret anything that night.

I was crying when we departed from Copenhagen, because the environment and its people were really nice. But I was also spirited to make new moves in Indonesia. I do wish that someday, I can make Indonesia as nice as Copenhagen with its own way.

It’s our job, young generation, to make changes now. If we delay it today, then when?

We are the next world leaders, so why don’t we become the local and young leaders now?

Thank you.

Story of ArtCycle Day

"My friends and I were picking the pests from each block of this small garden. We joined a club called PRIGES (Prima Green School), which focused on the environmental issues and how we prevent it. I miss this kind of time, when I got home dirtier than usual, the feelings when we saw our plants were growing and it's producing fruits.

This kind of activity, I glad I had them earlier than I can. I won't have any kind of this experience again. Well, each second of life has a different meaning, feel, lessons."

Here's a short story about my first official project, which is not the main one, but... Well you'll know why from my story below.

Like what I have said in my presentation on IYC (Indonesian Youth Conference), I am planning to make a "Tree-R Campaign", a summer-camp-kind-of-activity which needs one month or more for all events, and will be involving children from 8 until 12 years old. I was planning to do this project (with my team-mates) before I presented it, and I thought it was a great idea to present it in front of my fellows from all around Indonesia.

So, I started to design and arrange the events, BUT, I just found out a really disadvantage fact which made me think twice and unfortunately, I have to postpone this project. The fact that Students of Public Senior High School have less holiday than my previous school, which means My friends and I have less time to focus on this project. This news really turned me down at that time, and I can't think anything else for a moment.

Maybe some of you think it's not a big deal, because many people got no problems even they have less time, they still could do great things. Well, the problem for me and my friends is, this event needs a direct participation from the committee, which means, we have to go to the field. And in this project, we doesn't prepare things for a month for a day, but we prepare things for a month for a month full day.

I am trying to find solutions and I know we still able to do it in these years, but my closest holiday is here, and we (especially me) really want to do something. This is my first holiday outside my hometown, and I promise myself to do something useful for it.

Then, I got a click!

I remembered that one of my mother's friends, Aunt Sandra, usually makes a creativity day in our community every Ramadhan Holiday, and I planned to do almost a same thing as hers on this year's Ramadhan Holiday. The difference between our event with hers is that we are going to do it at school with more diverse children, and we will also do a short presentation about our environment. What makes me relief is that this event looks like a short version of Tree-R Campaign. Yuhuuui.

I will share to you all about what the event is going to look like, but for this time, I just want to share how grateful I am that Allah still gives me a chance to do something this holiday. Well, tomorrow we're going to meet the school's people, and I hope everything is going to be fine and we're able to run this event, which we call it ArtCycle Day(s). Nice, huh, ACD? It sounds like acid, hehe.

Will share more about ArtCycle Day soon, wish this project will be approved.

Wish us luck! Yippie!

PS: I really hope everything is going to turn out just fine. Relax...