The Abandonment of Tenggarong City

Have you ever gone to Samarinda before?

Samarinda is located in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is very very humid and hot, to be honest. I recommend you to go there, to see all the beautiful sides, yet all the abandonment places there.

Actually, my mom and I decided to go to Samarinda to see a wedding whom my dad's friend invited us. That was the only reason we went to Samarinda. As day by day passing by there, we asked ourselves, "why did we waste so much time here (5 days) without seeing the city, sight seeing and having little tour about it?" So, that's why we started to plan spontaneously to have sight seeing around Samarinda the day right after we went to a wedding of my dad's friend's daughter.

The next day, we went to Tenggarong City. It is located not to far from Samarinda, it'll take about an hour to go there from Samarainda. I personally think that Tenggarong is a very lonely city, because there are less people and activities in this city. Local people said (I read some news also) there was a governor named Rita Widyasari. She was famous for her role as a good governor, but live luxuriously. She is now in jail because of her corruption case. Oh, Mrs. Rita, how could you take money from your own people?

We were happy, though, to see Mulawarman Museum. There were a lot of strong histories explained in this museum. 

The center room of Mulawarman Museum.

Closer look of local governor(s) of East Kalimantan.

After the visit of this museum, we went to Kumala Island which is located across Tenggarong City. It is a small island, built to be a tourism place for public. We had wanted to go to Kumala Island right after we prayed Duhur at 12:00 PM. But the sun directly stroke so harsh, so we decided to go to the island later (at about 3:00 PM). The weather at 3:00 PM was not so great, because it was raining hard earlier. Honestly, my impression to Kumala Island is very very disappointed. As a visitor, my expectation to a place for tourism was at least being maintained well. But this was... really shocking me. 

This place is the only thing that was good enough in this island.

There were flood everywhere in the island because of raining. There were children playing around the island with bikes. But there was FLOOD, come on. I expect that every place in the city should have at least a good irrigation. I saw with my own eyes that this island, and even this City of Tenggarong, have been ignored because of the case of Rita Widyasari. Again, I'm going to talk about Mrs. Rita Widyasari. She was one of the supervisor of this tourism place. She had a lot of great programs to improve Tenggarong City back then. But, news on the internet said that she took more than a hundred billions with two other suspects, along the way while she was building up Tenggarong City; starting from building schools, infrastructures, tourism places, and a lot more. She took the money from her own people. She took it when she impressed her people with her programs as a governor. That's basically ironic. Now, the city looks like a dead city with no improvement. I really don't like corrupt, and this case, with real evidence I saw (while I expected to have a great holiday), makes me both sad and angry. 

On the other day, we went spontaneously to Aji Imbut Stadium in Tenggarong too.

And, another disappointment I've got here in the stadium. The stadium is big: it has a very spacious parking lot, a great site to visit. But, again, it is being abandoned because there is no people who wants to take care of it! Oh my, I was upset seeing this. I mean, the government agreed to build something, and it was used once or twice, then what? Nothing happened again after that. The people agreed to the government decision on building this stadium. But, no one takes an act for this case. A building costs A LOT of money, effort, human resources, and of course giant equipment. The money comes from the people who live there and pay taxes. Don't they think that they deserve to have more than just some abandonment buildings? If you think about it, it has the other side to see. I know that making a good maintenance of a building or a public place needs a lot of money to pay human resources and more equipment. But, it's getting on my nerves, really. They should be more aware of what's happening in their own region, and I speak this to both the people and the government. 

I'm here just to say what I have read and have experienced. So, in my point of view, I'm blaming the corrupts who couldn't think clearly before they did something that was really horrible to imagine. Tenggarong City should be a worth city to live in again, without any corrupts inside of the government's organization structures. The people deserve it. I realize, as a true citizen of Indonesia, that I need to do something about it. Starting from little thing I should do, be more aware of my surroundings, whether it's my neighborhood, environment, region, or my people. We should at least BE AWARE. Being aware makes you want to do something, to care about what is happening in our country, our world. From caring, you will feel within your heart you have to do something about it, make a change, a good change. I don't quite understand politics, but I can tell, everybody can tell, that corruption is unacceptable in any kind of situation.

Before I end this post, let me show you some food I ate in East Kalimatan to make me (and you) feel better, lol.

Curry Martabak by the river. It was GOOD I can tell you.

This isn't Durian, it's Lai Fruit. The taste is great, Durian's still the winner, though.

All photos were taken by Yashica fx super 2000 and film Portra 160, except for the food pictures I took with my iPhone 6s.

Derawan Islands: A Great Place to Explore

Hi good people!

I'm going to talk about my last trip to Derawan Islands, July 2018. Derawan Islands are located in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It has a lot of islands, but people usually only go to 3-5 islands. It was pretty amazing, but I didn't have enough time to enjoy all those beauty islands, because I stayed there only for one night. This wasn't a good example - most of people go to Derawan Islands and stay there for at least 3 days and 2 nights. I went there with only my mom, but there were two men accompanied us. This was all spontaneous, we booked our flights one day before we went. This also wasn't a good example, because when you book a flight too late, it'll cost more expensive. 

Let's talk about the itinerary. First thing first, we stayed in Berau Island. We prepared going to Derawan Islands start from 3:00 AM (well, we only had more or less 24 hours!). First, we had to go to Tanjung Batu Port to use speed boat from the port to Derawan Island. The trip from Berau to Tanjung Batu took 2 hours by car. Then, we used speed boat to Derawan Island. For your information, Derawan Island is only one island, while Derawan Islands is the associations of islands, so there's a lot of them. The waves were crazy that day, I got really dizzy all the way from the port to Derawan Island.

We stayed in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage in Derawan Island. It has range cost from IDR 500,000 - IDR 2,000,000 per night, plus breakfast. We chose the wing room, it's the room that's actually above the water and it was nice. We could see oceans clearly and it's very near to snorkeling area, I recommend you all to choose the wing room if you someday stayed in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage. So I put my things first, then straightly went to Maratua Island. My mom couldn't join me because she couldn't handle herself from the waves. So I went with my father's friends (the two men that I was talking about earlier). 

These are photos taken in Derawan Island.

This was one of the cottages (wing room) in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage.

When I arrived in Maratua Island, there's a man called Mas Fahrul who works as a policeman and guided us (my father's friends and me). We ate first in the early afternoon. I had a fried fish and it was so good because I think that fish products in sea areas are all fresh and new. After eating, we went to Maratua airport (it's crazy it has an airport already!). We were just seeing the front face of the airport, then we went to Goa Haji Mangku. It was a cave under the water. I remember the view's almost the same with Goa Hawang in Southeast Maluku, the one that I visited from Tanimbar Kei's expedition last year (such a good memory). I met people from Jakarta in Goa Haji Mangku, they were on holiday. 

Maratua Island, local people said, is the biggest island from all islands in Derawan Islands. It consists of four villages and a site for an airport. Honestly, it's better than Derawan Island - I mean it's neater and cleaner from where I saw. 

These are photos taken in Maratuta Island.

I ate lunch with fish menu here, Pasagidan.

I always adore God's creation. Look at those sea colors!

They were Mas Gatot, Mas Fahrul, and Om Jek. I liked all of them, they're super nice and informative!

This is Goa Haji Mangku

After strolling around Maratua Island, we went to Kakaban Island, where I saw a lot of jellyfish!! This was sooo exciting, we swam with those cute-brownish jellyfish. Kakaban Island is like a ring, and we had to walk around five minutes to go to sort of a lake (in the middle of Kakaban Island) that has jellyfish in it. I didn't have a chance to take them with analog, because I don't have underwater camera tools, but Thank God I DID take them with my phone. I'll let you see my video about Derawan Islands in the last part. 

These are photos taken in Kakaban Island.

This was a speed boat we used to go around Derawan Islands.

Kakaban Island was my last destination before going back to Derawan Island. I didn't have time to go to Sangalaki Island, but you guys should go to Sangalaki Island because people said it's really beautiful and you can see sea turtles! How cute, right? 

So I went back to Derawan Island, but I didn't stop snorkeling, ha ha. I continued to snorkel under my room. It was late, at about 4-5 PM. The fish and coral reefs are still good and there's a lot of them, I was glad! Most of famous beaches which have snorkeling program usually don't have coral reefs that are alive and there's only a few of clown fish - but this was different and nice actually. I met my mom in the room cottage, and we spent the rest of the night eating seafood and talk about Kalimantan news with my father's friends who knew a lot about it, he he. 

Back to Derawan Island, I was still able to take some pictures.

The next day in the morning, we went back to Tanjung Batu Port and Berau to take a flight back to Balikpapan (a city in East Kalimantan), then went back to Bandung. This trip was amazingly great, all those spontaneous destinations were making me proud to reach them, ha ha. But honestly, it's a shame we didn't go to Sangalaki and the weather was not so nice, you know, there was a lot of cloudy moments. There was a moment when we went to Maratua, we could have seen a leopard shark on the way from the speed boat. But, because of the bad weather and the waves were not so good, that leopard shark didn't show up. It's fine, I still can see it in another time, this is also included the sea turtles. 

This was a video I made from my phone. I edited so quickly, also from my phone. Sorry for the low quality and bad sound arrangement.

In conclusion, I like Derawan Islands a lot. I'm sure I would to go back there and stay more days than just only one night!

All photos were taken by Yashica fx super 2000 and film Portra 160 and Fuji Industrial 100.
Videos were recorded by iPhone 6s and edited by Splice.

A Magical Dream [Trial Edited Photos]

Hello, people!

For the past months, I got chance to work with one of my friend, Hana, to make my brand catalogs. Photos were taken by my friend, Tirza.  This part's so random - I tried to edit some of Hana's photos and it got me thinking 'Can I be a magazine editor someday?'. I really love magazines since I was a little girl. Being someone who works for any kind of magazines would be such a magical dream; adventure, fashion, folk, indie, business, any type of magazines that ever exist, haha! 

I edited Hana's photos into a cover magazine. You know, when you go to a bookstore and there's a magazine shelves and you get really excited about it. When you take a peak, there's a lot of beautiful magazines with inspiring covers - and that's the time I really like about falling in love with magazines: the cover. So I tried to make one, or two using photoshop. Here are the results.

Plain version.

No plain version.

I really like color play in a canvas, picture, photo, any media that show the colors. But, I still like to put a simplicity element in any kind of my works. I don't know, I think it still needs some editing, these pictures. I'm still learning though. I promise I won't stop trying to find my way to work on a magazine. I can see that one day I'll be someone. (So that's my spirit, I hope it's contagious to you all.)

Cheers. 

When You Shut Your People Down

Hi.

I'm going to bring up a topic that is quite hard to understand, and I hope you're still okay with this one.

You sure all have the people you like, you love - who are always there to cheer you up. You sure have the people who don't hesitate to say hi to you first, who never forget to chat you first to catch up with you and your life updates. You sure have the people who do big things for the sake of your happiness - even if they're only a few ones. 

But, what if you shut them down? 

There's this time you are afraid of being opened to most of people. You are so afraid of being judged until you realize all these things are not worth to be talked about with your loved ones. Have you felt, at that moment, most of your efforts seemed to go amiss? There's this time you feel like crying but you surely think that crying definitely isn't a solution? And when that happened, you start to be quiet all of sudden - and this is the dangerous part: you start to shut people down. There are a lot of negative things in this world, A LOT. And this thing could happen if you let those negative things come into your mind - even it's just a few ones. 

What I'm saying that being in a circle of that phase will make you walk in the same feeling: heartless. Maybe you will feel the pain, but it comes from yourself. For people who are struggling to avoid that feeling and most of the times it's still coming back, I know what it feels like. I have a problem with that feeling as well. The way negative things come to you easily is just a very unfortunate thing that I have, that maybe people out there have. I'm not regretting this happen to me. Although it seems like a weakness to you, I feel like it's the only opportunity for me to see things in both sides. I AM still trying to be more open to things that happen continuously in this life cycle. 

Back to the topic. When you shut your people down, I think it's common for people to do that - as long as it's not too much and dramatic. I do that to clear my mind, to see what I should do in the future in a long term, to realize if my do-things were good enough for me and people around me, to basically reflect yourself. You were born to socialize with people. But it's really fine to stay away from them for a while, then you can come back with your new fresh mind.

I think I'm saying all these things to myself. to remind myself that it is both okay and not okay to shut people down when you feel like you actually shut yourself down. The point is that you have to believe in yourself first, that's the key. Believe that you can do great things to yourself, to your family, to the world. For some people it's very easy because they already have power in their mind, but for some people it's the opposite because they have to build up that power, the belief. The next point is that you have to get closer to Your Creator, this is also the key. If you don't have people to talk to, if you feel like you can't be open to people, be open to God - He always listens to you no matter what. 

In conclusion, I don't expect you to be sympathetic to what I feel right now, I just need you to understand - not only to me, but to people who seem to shut their people down. There must be some sort of reasons why people do things differently than they usually do. 

Thank you for reading this, though. :)