Genesis - and the Finish Line
In the summer of 1985, my work in Boston (actually Sudbury), MA was coming to an end. With the cut back of the SDI program budget, many of my co-workers were getting laid off. The development of this program, as I mentioned previously was eventually terminated altogether Later that summer I went on a job interview in Texas, all expenses paid. When I arrived in Dallas and proceeded to have my interview, I was directly interviewed by a department director who was just promoted to the company VP. His name was Larry J. I was ctually scheduled to see several department managers, but after that one inerview, I was told that he wants me there, and to just name a time that I wan to move. Needless to say, instead of having an all day interview, I was back at the Dallas airport just after lunch. My return flight to Boston was supposed to be at 5 PM, but somehow I lost track of time, and by the time I realized it, my flight has departed for over an hour. And I was sitting at the gate! The ticket counter person was amused, but they finally managed to get me on to another flight that departed around midnight. To this day, I have no idea how I missed my flight home.
It took me several weeks to decide, and I finally told my future company that I cannot be there until the beginning of the next year. I told them that I was needed by my present company to train my replacement. They agreed, and also after some negotiation, they agreed to ship our two cars, belongings, and paid for our family to fly to Dallas instead of moving ourselves. That was the last move for our family. We moved in January 1986, and have been in Texas since then.
The rest is history, and most of yall know most of it.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
November Twenty Nine
Genesis ... Part Four
When we moved to Fort Wayne in 1977 for my stint at the second company, we wanted a house with a basement, but, alas, it seemed that all the newer houses they built there were built on slab. So we started talking to the Realtor about wanting to built one with a basement. We were discouraged from doing so, saying that the clay ground in the area is just not the right kind of dirt for basements. Well, we actually managed to get a two story colonial style house built with a basement. The builder put in a french drain outside the foundation, and inside the basement there is a well with sump pump running on the electric power. This was a nice change from our old house in Michigan. The basement pump worked well as long as we had power. One day, we lost power for an extended amount of time, and the water table started to rise in the basement, and without any power for the pump we had flooded basement for a while until the power came back.
Several times a week, one of my co-worker named Harry T. would come over after work and we'd have a ping-pong game in the basement. He was actually the one that later got me interested in playing tennis. I think that was the time that Prince came up with oversize aluminum racquet with the green plastic trim. And Vic Braden had a weekly tennis program on TV called "Tennis for the Future". Fort Wayne was a good place to raise a family, and we were blessed to have been there and be involved with the church family that we belonged to. We played softball ( I broke my collar bone after colliding with the second basement in an attempt to retrieve a pop up), help with sandbagging during one of the flooding that occurred periodically in downtown Fort Wayne, and enjoyed the many fine produced planted by the Amish communities around the area.
In 1982, I was offered took a job in the Boston area. I went there first, leaving the family behind, and lived in an apartment for a while. As in Fort Wayne, we looked for a used house, but ended up with a brand new house, in Milford, Massachusetts.
During my years in MA, I was involved with another goverment program called Milstar, a system similar to the one called GPS now, and also with one called SDI (strategic defense initiative). I don't remember what became of Milstar, but the SDI program eventually died. The only remnant of it is the missile shooting capability recently demonstrated when the US fired a missile to blow up a failing satellite that was about to re-enter the earth carrying dangerous hydrazine fuel. As a family, every time we had visitors from out of town, we'd go to downtown Boston to see Faneuill Hall, the Boston Aquarium, and sometimes tour the old wooden ship that is moored in the Boston Harbor. When we first moved to the neighborhood in Milford, we were quite isolated, and to us it seemed that the people there are quite reclusive, so we held a neighborhood party to get to know our neighbors. One of them, the Revzin family became our best friends. Kathy ran with P almost daily, including the Boston Marathon once, and D and I did a few things together, such as driving to New Hampshire to buy our first ever IBM PC with green monochrome monitor. Soon after, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, and I was enthralled by it and ended up with one that has a meager 128MB memory with no hard drive, but it could do word processing, drawing, and spreadsheet using user friendly interface instead of the Lotus 123 command line entries. A friend of mine and myself at work started a company Macintosh User Group called RMUG. Ed King, if you ever come accross this blog, do you remember me?
To be continued.
When we moved to Fort Wayne in 1977 for my stint at the second company, we wanted a house with a basement, but, alas, it seemed that all the newer houses they built there were built on slab. So we started talking to the Realtor about wanting to built one with a basement. We were discouraged from doing so, saying that the clay ground in the area is just not the right kind of dirt for basements. Well, we actually managed to get a two story colonial style house built with a basement. The builder put in a french drain outside the foundation, and inside the basement there is a well with sump pump running on the electric power. This was a nice change from our old house in Michigan. The basement pump worked well as long as we had power. One day, we lost power for an extended amount of time, and the water table started to rise in the basement, and without any power for the pump we had flooded basement for a while until the power came back.
Several times a week, one of my co-worker named Harry T. would come over after work and we'd have a ping-pong game in the basement. He was actually the one that later got me interested in playing tennis. I think that was the time that Prince came up with oversize aluminum racquet with the green plastic trim. And Vic Braden had a weekly tennis program on TV called "Tennis for the Future". Fort Wayne was a good place to raise a family, and we were blessed to have been there and be involved with the church family that we belonged to. We played softball ( I broke my collar bone after colliding with the second basement in an attempt to retrieve a pop up), help with sandbagging during one of the flooding that occurred periodically in downtown Fort Wayne, and enjoyed the many fine produced planted by the Amish communities around the area.
In 1982, I was offered took a job in the Boston area. I went there first, leaving the family behind, and lived in an apartment for a while. As in Fort Wayne, we looked for a used house, but ended up with a brand new house, in Milford, Massachusetts.
During my years in MA, I was involved with another goverment program called Milstar, a system similar to the one called GPS now, and also with one called SDI (strategic defense initiative). I don't remember what became of Milstar, but the SDI program eventually died. The only remnant of it is the missile shooting capability recently demonstrated when the US fired a missile to blow up a failing satellite that was about to re-enter the earth carrying dangerous hydrazine fuel. As a family, every time we had visitors from out of town, we'd go to downtown Boston to see Faneuill Hall, the Boston Aquarium, and sometimes tour the old wooden ship that is moored in the Boston Harbor. When we first moved to the neighborhood in Milford, we were quite isolated, and to us it seemed that the people there are quite reclusive, so we held a neighborhood party to get to know our neighbors. One of them, the Revzin family became our best friends. Kathy ran with P almost daily, including the Boston Marathon once, and D and I did a few things together, such as driving to New Hampshire to buy our first ever IBM PC with green monochrome monitor. Soon after, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, and I was enthralled by it and ended up with one that has a meager 128MB memory with no hard drive, but it could do word processing, drawing, and spreadsheet using user friendly interface instead of the Lotus 123 command line entries. A friend of mine and myself at work started a company Macintosh User Group called RMUG. Ed King, if you ever come accross this blog, do you remember me?
To be continued.
Friday, November 28, 2008
November Twenty Eight
Genesis ... Part Three
While I was still at Calvin College, I have not yet became a US citizen, and my Indonesian passport needed renewal for me to maintain my legal status. I communicated with the Indonesian consulate in the US, and received a passport renewal request form, as well as a name change form with an explanation. If you have been around a long time, you might remember that in 1965 (just before I left Indonesia) there was a big revolt going on there. The founder and lifetime, one and only president at the time, President Sukarno was overthrown by the military, led by General Suharto. Sukarno, with the support of communist Chinese government was attempting to wrestle absolute power from the military, and it back fired on him. He was then put in house arrest until he died several years later.
The fact that the China supported this attempted coup d'etat, and that in general, most Indonesian of Chinese ethnicity are economically better off than the natives caused a lot of jealousy. Many big riots, house burning, killing, and discrimination occurred between 1965 and the years since. At that time, Indonesian of Chinese ethnicity still used their Chinese names, including me. If you are my family, you know what my initial T.H.L. stand for. Anyway, the name change was "suggested" to minimize the race discrimination problem that I might encounter. Someone told me what my Chinese name meant, so in the process of renewing my Indonesian passport, I went ahead and changed my legal name to a commonly used Indonesian name. The Indonesian word "rahman" means "grace" in English. Nowadays, many Indonesian Chinese have picked common Indonesian name, thus on paper, even I cannot distinguish whether they are native Indonesian or Indonesian of Chinese ancestry. I'll leave it to you to guess how my first name Julius came about? Because this name change was encouraged by the Indonesian authority, some of my siblinsg and relatives also changed theirs. Unfortunately, we all picked different last names, thus my brother Budi ended up with Kabcdefghij.
Since my college graduation, I have worked for 5 different companies, everyone of them involved mostly with government related contracts. Towards my last year at the first company, I started doing computer design, and embarked on a design for my home personal computer. At that time, you cannot buy a PC or Mac as you can do now. The only computer systems that exists are home brewed by electronic hobbyist, and most of them used the just created computer microprocessor chip called the 4004, followed by 4040 (4-bit computer chips) then the 8008, 8080, and Z80 (8-bit chips). My design was based on the Z80, and I built by own chassis (aluminum box), with power supply, and toggle switches for inputting data and memory address. It has a grand total of 8 kilobytes of memory, and no hard drive. Every memory instructions have to be entered one memory address, and one memory value at a time. Do a wikipedia on "microprocessor" to get more detailed information. Isn't it amazing how much computer technology has progressed since then? For me, as an engineer I have been able to see and appreciate the leap frog improvements and enabling technologies that were involved in their development to date. It is an experience that most people have benefitted but not realized how amazing it is to see what we've been able to accomplish now with these tiny silicon pieces.
Steph and Jen were born in Michigan, and later we moved to Indiana for my second company. Mel and Brian were born there. We moved there in late summer, and I remember Kathy who was then pregnant with Mel walking around the Three Rivers Festival hoping that Mel would come early, as she was very uncomfortable. But Mel was carried to full term like the others. I also remember the first heavy snow we had there. At that time we were still living in an apartment while our house was being built. It snowed and snowed, and by the time it stopped, the snow accumulation was about half way up the windows.
While in Indiana, I was involved in the computer system development that process data from the first ever CAT scan system (computerized axial tomography) being manufactured by Phillips Medical System. At that time, Philips and G.E. were racing to be the first manufacturers of this new medical imaging system. At that time the data from a CAT scan was recorded on a spool of magnetic tape the size of a big serving platter. We then process the data on a DEC PDP-11/34 machine, and it would take several hours to produce the slice images.
To be continued.
While I was still at Calvin College, I have not yet became a US citizen, and my Indonesian passport needed renewal for me to maintain my legal status. I communicated with the Indonesian consulate in the US, and received a passport renewal request form, as well as a name change form with an explanation. If you have been around a long time, you might remember that in 1965 (just before I left Indonesia) there was a big revolt going on there. The founder and lifetime, one and only president at the time, President Sukarno was overthrown by the military, led by General Suharto. Sukarno, with the support of communist Chinese government was attempting to wrestle absolute power from the military, and it back fired on him. He was then put in house arrest until he died several years later.
The fact that the China supported this attempted coup d'etat, and that in general, most Indonesian of Chinese ethnicity are economically better off than the natives caused a lot of jealousy. Many big riots, house burning, killing, and discrimination occurred between 1965 and the years since. At that time, Indonesian of Chinese ethnicity still used their Chinese names, including me. If you are my family, you know what my initial T.H.L. stand for. Anyway, the name change was "suggested" to minimize the race discrimination problem that I might encounter. Someone told me what my Chinese name meant, so in the process of renewing my Indonesian passport, I went ahead and changed my legal name to a commonly used Indonesian name. The Indonesian word "rahman" means "grace" in English. Nowadays, many Indonesian Chinese have picked common Indonesian name, thus on paper, even I cannot distinguish whether they are native Indonesian or Indonesian of Chinese ancestry. I'll leave it to you to guess how my first name Julius came about? Because this name change was encouraged by the Indonesian authority, some of my siblinsg and relatives also changed theirs. Unfortunately, we all picked different last names, thus my brother Budi ended up with Kabcdefghij.
Since my college graduation, I have worked for 5 different companies, everyone of them involved mostly with government related contracts. Towards my last year at the first company, I started doing computer design, and embarked on a design for my home personal computer. At that time, you cannot buy a PC or Mac as you can do now. The only computer systems that exists are home brewed by electronic hobbyist, and most of them used the just created computer microprocessor chip called the 4004, followed by 4040 (4-bit computer chips) then the 8008, 8080, and Z80 (8-bit chips). My design was based on the Z80, and I built by own chassis (aluminum box), with power supply, and toggle switches for inputting data and memory address. It has a grand total of 8 kilobytes of memory, and no hard drive. Every memory instructions have to be entered one memory address, and one memory value at a time. Do a wikipedia on "microprocessor" to get more detailed information. Isn't it amazing how much computer technology has progressed since then? For me, as an engineer I have been able to see and appreciate the leap frog improvements and enabling technologies that were involved in their development to date. It is an experience that most people have benefitted but not realized how amazing it is to see what we've been able to accomplish now with these tiny silicon pieces.
Steph and Jen were born in Michigan, and later we moved to Indiana for my second company. Mel and Brian were born there. We moved there in late summer, and I remember Kathy who was then pregnant with Mel walking around the Three Rivers Festival hoping that Mel would come early, as she was very uncomfortable. But Mel was carried to full term like the others. I also remember the first heavy snow we had there. At that time we were still living in an apartment while our house was being built. It snowed and snowed, and by the time it stopped, the snow accumulation was about half way up the windows.
While in Indiana, I was involved in the computer system development that process data from the first ever CAT scan system (computerized axial tomography) being manufactured by Phillips Medical System. At that time, Philips and G.E. were racing to be the first manufacturers of this new medical imaging system. At that time the data from a CAT scan was recorded on a spool of magnetic tape the size of a big serving platter. We then process the data on a DEC PDP-11/34 machine, and it would take several hours to produce the slice images.
To be continued.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
November Twenty Seven
Headaches ...
Tonight's blog will be short, and it is a sidetrack from the previous blogs. We went to the Denver International Airport early, anticipating large crowds. Sure enough, the economy parking lots are already closed and full. We ended up at a more expensive lot called Wally Park, but we have no choice.
Previously, when Jan made the ticket reservation for our flights, she booked her flight and my flight on two internet transactions because she will be staying longer in Dallas for various appointments. After doing her's she tried mine, and after some internet work found a flight that is different from hers on the outbound flight. All that time she was wondering how come my flight departs later, but gets to Dallas earlier. I thought that maybe she just booked a flight that has a stopover, and though nothing of it.
At the AA counter we asked the lady there if I can change my flight to be on the same one Jan is in. She said, there is no such flight number out of Denver. So Jan pulled out her printed reservation, and she laughed. She said, my reservation is for Dallas to Denver, and back to Dallas! That explains why my flight times differences with hers!
Luckily, she was able to correct the wrong ticket by canceling that one, gave us credit for it and issuing a new one, at an additional cost of $60.00 We grab that, and we made it home to Dallas safely. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. May our Lord Bless you always.
Tonight's blog will be short, and it is a sidetrack from the previous blogs. We went to the Denver International Airport early, anticipating large crowds. Sure enough, the economy parking lots are already closed and full. We ended up at a more expensive lot called Wally Park, but we have no choice.
Previously, when Jan made the ticket reservation for our flights, she booked her flight and my flight on two internet transactions because she will be staying longer in Dallas for various appointments. After doing her's she tried mine, and after some internet work found a flight that is different from hers on the outbound flight. All that time she was wondering how come my flight departs later, but gets to Dallas earlier. I thought that maybe she just booked a flight that has a stopover, and though nothing of it.
At the AA counter we asked the lady there if I can change my flight to be on the same one Jan is in. She said, there is no such flight number out of Denver. So Jan pulled out her printed reservation, and she laughed. She said, my reservation is for Dallas to Denver, and back to Dallas! That explains why my flight times differences with hers!
Luckily, she was able to correct the wrong ticket by canceling that one, gave us credit for it and issuing a new one, at an additional cost of $60.00 We grab that, and we made it home to Dallas safely. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. May our Lord Bless you always.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
November Twenty Six
Genesis ... part two
While going to Calvin, I managed to buy my first ever car, a used 1962 Plymouth Valiant. At the time, Plymouth with their 6-cylinder slant six engine was a pretty good company, and had no viable competition from the Japanese car manufacturers. I really like cars, and I had a successions of several used ones throughout my lifetime. Never bought brand new cars until later after I married. In my last year at Calvin, I moved in to a house lived in by a retired school teacher named RL. She was an orphan in China, and was adopted by an American missionary that went to China in the early 1900s. She was very good to me and took me in as if I was her son. She herself adopted two orphan girls from China and raised them herself, but, by the time I moved in to RL's house, the girls were already gone and have family of their own. I lost touch and contact with them and now I don't even remember their names. RL passed away sometimes during that time, but my memory is fuzzy on the exact time. In the summer of 1969 (I think) my Mom and the rest of my siblings immigrated to the US and we rented a house in Grand Rapids from a church member named Mr. K. He was an older guy, and he was a widower that just married one of the neighbor, and his house became available. We spent that summer together, I took them to picnics at a favorite lake about 30 miles away called Gun Lake. We would pack up our food and portable grill, and while there we would cook typical American food; hot dogs and hamburgers. It was an idyllic summer. That fall I packed up my meager belongings and moved to Ann Arbor, to begin the final leg of my college education.
That summer was also the summer that I met Kathy. She was just 16, and lived a few houses down from where we lived. She and her sisters would come to our house and hang out with us, Chinese/Indonesian boys. I am not sure what got them interested in us, since we spoke funny English, and to them probably funny customs. Her mom and dad are very traditional Dutch American family from Iowa, and thus pretty much a meat and potato kind of family.
I've never dated anyone, and that summer Kathy, her sister and I went to see Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Carpenters. I don't remember which one was the main billing. After that Kathy and I started to become more than just friends. During my years at UofM, I went home almost every weekend to spend time with her. That's about 300 miles round trip for two years. On one of those weekends, I was on my way back to Ann Arbor on a Sunday night in the middle of winter, and I hit a patch of ice on the highway, spun 360 degree, and kept on going. I can only remember one weekend that I spent in Ann Arbor. On that particular weekend, I went home, brought her back to Ann Arbor, went to the UofM game against Ohio State, and brought her back to Grand Rapids, and then went back to school. It was a crazy time. All the the times I sold my football ticket allowance for extra spending money.
I graduated in the Spring of 1972, interviewed with one company and was offered a job at Lear Siegler Inc., in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the huge salary of $10,800.00 I was hired as a hardware design engineer where I designed electronic circuits for the F4 Phantom aircraft. It sounded glorious, but the piece that I worked on is the weapon delivery control panel, principally a little box that has push buttons, and these buttons then send signals to the weapon computer to release whatever ammunition is commanded. For those that don't know, when a physical switch is switch is pressed, little do you realize that the contact points bounced around for a few fractions of a milliseconds, thus sending the computer a signal that says close-open-close-open etc. until it stabilized. This is normally a bad thing because the computer would get confused and could malfunction. My job/design was to make sure that the first instance of closed contact stay closed electronically. That same year, I proposed and marry Kathy. We bought used furnitures, and bought an old house for a mere $7,500.00 Some of that furniture are still at the house in Rockwall.
To be continued.
While going to Calvin, I managed to buy my first ever car, a used 1962 Plymouth Valiant. At the time, Plymouth with their 6-cylinder slant six engine was a pretty good company, and had no viable competition from the Japanese car manufacturers. I really like cars, and I had a successions of several used ones throughout my lifetime. Never bought brand new cars until later after I married. In my last year at Calvin, I moved in to a house lived in by a retired school teacher named RL. She was an orphan in China, and was adopted by an American missionary that went to China in the early 1900s. She was very good to me and took me in as if I was her son. She herself adopted two orphan girls from China and raised them herself, but, by the time I moved in to RL's house, the girls were already gone and have family of their own. I lost touch and contact with them and now I don't even remember their names. RL passed away sometimes during that time, but my memory is fuzzy on the exact time. In the summer of 1969 (I think) my Mom and the rest of my siblings immigrated to the US and we rented a house in Grand Rapids from a church member named Mr. K. He was an older guy, and he was a widower that just married one of the neighbor, and his house became available. We spent that summer together, I took them to picnics at a favorite lake about 30 miles away called Gun Lake. We would pack up our food and portable grill, and while there we would cook typical American food; hot dogs and hamburgers. It was an idyllic summer. That fall I packed up my meager belongings and moved to Ann Arbor, to begin the final leg of my college education.
That summer was also the summer that I met Kathy. She was just 16, and lived a few houses down from where we lived. She and her sisters would come to our house and hang out with us, Chinese/Indonesian boys. I am not sure what got them interested in us, since we spoke funny English, and to them probably funny customs. Her mom and dad are very traditional Dutch American family from Iowa, and thus pretty much a meat and potato kind of family.
I've never dated anyone, and that summer Kathy, her sister and I went to see Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Carpenters. I don't remember which one was the main billing. After that Kathy and I started to become more than just friends. During my years at UofM, I went home almost every weekend to spend time with her. That's about 300 miles round trip for two years. On one of those weekends, I was on my way back to Ann Arbor on a Sunday night in the middle of winter, and I hit a patch of ice on the highway, spun 360 degree, and kept on going. I can only remember one weekend that I spent in Ann Arbor. On that particular weekend, I went home, brought her back to Ann Arbor, went to the UofM game against Ohio State, and brought her back to Grand Rapids, and then went back to school. It was a crazy time. All the the times I sold my football ticket allowance for extra spending money.
I graduated in the Spring of 1972, interviewed with one company and was offered a job at Lear Siegler Inc., in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the huge salary of $10,800.00 I was hired as a hardware design engineer where I designed electronic circuits for the F4 Phantom aircraft. It sounded glorious, but the piece that I worked on is the weapon delivery control panel, principally a little box that has push buttons, and these buttons then send signals to the weapon computer to release whatever ammunition is commanded. For those that don't know, when a physical switch is switch is pressed, little do you realize that the contact points bounced around for a few fractions of a milliseconds, thus sending the computer a signal that says close-open-close-open etc. until it stabilized. This is normally a bad thing because the computer would get confused and could malfunction. My job/design was to make sure that the first instance of closed contact stay closed electronically. That same year, I proposed and marry Kathy. We bought used furnitures, and bought an old house for a mere $7,500.00 Some of that furniture are still at the house in Rockwall.
To be continued.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
November Twenty Five
Genesis of the Rahmandar Clan
I was born in Indonesia in 1946, and came from a large family of 11 children. I don't remember very much of my early childhood years, except for a few things that I will mention here to prevent scammers and identity theft from getting too much info about me. They are so prevalent nowadays.
When I was just a young boy, I remember that we were a poor family relative to some of our friends, and much better off when compared to the Indonesian villagers. By poor I meant that we have a mortar and brick house, but we do not have telephone or refrigerator, even till the time that I left the country for the US in 1966. My mom was the primary bread winner, and she earned her living by making embroidered shirts called "kebaya". She was married twice (one of them was my dad), but they both died fairly young. I remember my mom would hurry and finished an order, then she would sent me or my brother to the customer and collect the money so we could have the money for food or other needs. We used to hate doing that chore. It was so embarrassing. Our daily food ingredients were bought fresh from the open market, and leftovers just sat on top of the stove until they are fully consumed or went bad. Having chicken for a meal involved buying a live chicken, slitting its neck, draining the blood, and then letting the bird flutter for a few minutes till it died. Then its time to pluck the feathers. We did that by dunking it into a boiling water for a few minutes, then the feathers just slides off the skin.
Ever since I can remember, I have always made my own toys and kites. I made wooden tops with cut off nail as its spike, soccer ball made up of a balled up small stone wrapped in layers of newspaper and plenty of rubber bands. Remember those lamps with lampshade that rotates around an inner one with pictures of fishes swimming around the lamp as if they are in an aquarium? I made one of those too. I made my own kites using bamboo frame and thin crepe paper. One of the fun or naughty(?) thing I used to do was to capture big male crickets, feed them hot peppers, and then I would get together with my friends and let our crickets fight each other inside a shoe box. On occasions I would go to a nearby Zoo, and I'd try to find a hole in ground and lasso a scorpion using home made lasso made out of grass.
During my teen years, I had a small motorcycle, Zundapp with 50 cc engine. I worked on this bike almost all the time, and once I took everything apart and managed to put it back together, just for grins. I have always been the go to man when my mom's sewing machine broke. Her sewing machine is the treadle kind with a belt as the drive mechanism, and this belt is made of leather that breaks every so often. I also remember having a small shortwave radio, and I listened to Radio Australia English language broadcast almost everyday. I would probably still recognize the sound that they used to play at the beginning of their broadcast hour, the sound of a kookabura bird chirping.
I left Indonesia when I was twenty. Imagine how scary that time was for me. I have never left the place of my birth until that time. The furthest I had ever been at that time was perhaps 150 miles. I know very little of spoken English, but can read and understand some. Of course as you read this, you probably noticed that I have bad grammar. Indonesian language does not use any grammar whatsoever, thus I have a hard time using the proper tense, gender, the usage of singular/plural expressions in English. My mom scraped enough money for me to survive in the US for a year, but the rest was up to me. At that time, I have no idea what America is like except for Hollywood images. I remember arriving in San Fransisco airport, and had a phone number of my mom's friend who imigrated to the Netherlands, and later to the US. Since I have never used a tepehone in my life, I had to ask a stranger to call this family. I was so scared then.
Luckily someone there answered and they later picked me up at the Grand Rapids, MI airport.
The G family, although from Indonesia originally are pretty much an all American family. Their children all grew up in American school so they looked at me as "fresh of the boat" type person. I spent that summer with them, and they enrolled me at Calvin College in the fall of 1966. I lived in the dorm for the next couple of years, and sometimes when everyone had gone home for the holidays, I remember spending that time alone in the dorm as I had no place to go. I was lucky that they let me stay in the dorm for the holidays. Once my money ran out, I was able to obtain a work permit from the INS, and I worked everyday while working my way through school at a place called Keeler Brass. I had scheduled my classes so that they mostly in the mornings, and I'd go to work during the second shift. Needless to say, I didn't study much, and my grades suffered, but I managed to keep a passing grade. I spent three years at Calvin, and finished my pre-engineering degree there, and was accepted to continue my education at the University of Michigan School of Engineering. To be continued.
I was born in Indonesia in 1946, and came from a large family of 11 children. I don't remember very much of my early childhood years, except for a few things that I will mention here to prevent scammers and identity theft from getting too much info about me. They are so prevalent nowadays.
When I was just a young boy, I remember that we were a poor family relative to some of our friends, and much better off when compared to the Indonesian villagers. By poor I meant that we have a mortar and brick house, but we do not have telephone or refrigerator, even till the time that I left the country for the US in 1966. My mom was the primary bread winner, and she earned her living by making embroidered shirts called "kebaya". She was married twice (one of them was my dad), but they both died fairly young. I remember my mom would hurry and finished an order, then she would sent me or my brother to the customer and collect the money so we could have the money for food or other needs. We used to hate doing that chore. It was so embarrassing. Our daily food ingredients were bought fresh from the open market, and leftovers just sat on top of the stove until they are fully consumed or went bad. Having chicken for a meal involved buying a live chicken, slitting its neck, draining the blood, and then letting the bird flutter for a few minutes till it died. Then its time to pluck the feathers. We did that by dunking it into a boiling water for a few minutes, then the feathers just slides off the skin.
Ever since I can remember, I have always made my own toys and kites. I made wooden tops with cut off nail as its spike, soccer ball made up of a balled up small stone wrapped in layers of newspaper and plenty of rubber bands. Remember those lamps with lampshade that rotates around an inner one with pictures of fishes swimming around the lamp as if they are in an aquarium? I made one of those too. I made my own kites using bamboo frame and thin crepe paper. One of the fun or naughty(?) thing I used to do was to capture big male crickets, feed them hot peppers, and then I would get together with my friends and let our crickets fight each other inside a shoe box. On occasions I would go to a nearby Zoo, and I'd try to find a hole in ground and lasso a scorpion using home made lasso made out of grass.
During my teen years, I had a small motorcycle, Zundapp with 50 cc engine. I worked on this bike almost all the time, and once I took everything apart and managed to put it back together, just for grins. I have always been the go to man when my mom's sewing machine broke. Her sewing machine is the treadle kind with a belt as the drive mechanism, and this belt is made of leather that breaks every so often. I also remember having a small shortwave radio, and I listened to Radio Australia English language broadcast almost everyday. I would probably still recognize the sound that they used to play at the beginning of their broadcast hour, the sound of a kookabura bird chirping.
I left Indonesia when I was twenty. Imagine how scary that time was for me. I have never left the place of my birth until that time. The furthest I had ever been at that time was perhaps 150 miles. I know very little of spoken English, but can read and understand some. Of course as you read this, you probably noticed that I have bad grammar. Indonesian language does not use any grammar whatsoever, thus I have a hard time using the proper tense, gender, the usage of singular/plural expressions in English. My mom scraped enough money for me to survive in the US for a year, but the rest was up to me. At that time, I have no idea what America is like except for Hollywood images. I remember arriving in San Fransisco airport, and had a phone number of my mom's friend who imigrated to the Netherlands, and later to the US. Since I have never used a tepehone in my life, I had to ask a stranger to call this family. I was so scared then.
Luckily someone there answered and they later picked me up at the Grand Rapids, MI airport.
The G family, although from Indonesia originally are pretty much an all American family. Their children all grew up in American school so they looked at me as "fresh of the boat" type person. I spent that summer with them, and they enrolled me at Calvin College in the fall of 1966. I lived in the dorm for the next couple of years, and sometimes when everyone had gone home for the holidays, I remember spending that time alone in the dorm as I had no place to go. I was lucky that they let me stay in the dorm for the holidays. Once my money ran out, I was able to obtain a work permit from the INS, and I worked everyday while working my way through school at a place called Keeler Brass. I had scheduled my classes so that they mostly in the mornings, and I'd go to work during the second shift. Needless to say, I didn't study much, and my grades suffered, but I managed to keep a passing grade. I spent three years at Calvin, and finished my pre-engineering degree there, and was accepted to continue my education at the University of Michigan School of Engineering. To be continued.
Monday, November 24, 2008
November Twenty Four
What to write today?
Wow, I sat in front of this laptop for the past few minutes thinking of what to write for today, and I drew a blank. I wanted to write something that would have a focal point, but it is not there. So, here's another rambling.
My MacBook is finally on its way to New York. It should be at the recipient's hand by this Wednesday. Let's hope he can fix it.
Lots of people from my work are gone for the week. Regular gasoline are now selling in the Denver area for as low as $1.679/gallon. If you have an iPhone (or try their website), by far one of the best free application is the Bible, and Pandora. This is on top of the default apps already included with the phone such as maps, weather, stoc, iPod, and YouTube.
The Bible is a neat application that allows you to select many translation to view, from KJV to The Message, and if you wish, there are even various language translation available for viewing. You can choose Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, Korean, German, Dutch, Spanish, and many others. Some of the versions are available for download, so if you happened to be in an area with no cell phone coverage, you can still view the downloaded version. Oh, it also has a daily reading option, so you can read two chapters from the Old Testament, and one chapter from the New Testament. I use this option daily.
Pandora is a unique radio station like application. You enter a song name, or artist, and it will then play songs by that artist, as well as similar genre. If you enter Garth Brook, then it will play consecutively songs by him and the country music genre by other artist, e.g., Clint Black. Choose Irish Tenors, and you'll get a lot of old traditional gospels. Selecting Thumbs up or Thumbs Down refine your music selection for that genre. Its really kewl.
One other program worth mentioning is Shazam. This program listens to whatever song is being played on your radio, TV or whatever music is playing, and after a few seconds it will tell you the name of the song! Very kewl!
Wow, I sat in front of this laptop for the past few minutes thinking of what to write for today, and I drew a blank. I wanted to write something that would have a focal point, but it is not there. So, here's another rambling.
My MacBook is finally on its way to New York. It should be at the recipient's hand by this Wednesday. Let's hope he can fix it.
Lots of people from my work are gone for the week. Regular gasoline are now selling in the Denver area for as low as $1.679/gallon. If you have an iPhone (or try their website), by far one of the best free application is the Bible, and Pandora. This is on top of the default apps already included with the phone such as maps, weather, stoc, iPod, and YouTube.
The Bible is a neat application that allows you to select many translation to view, from KJV to The Message, and if you wish, there are even various language translation available for viewing. You can choose Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, Korean, German, Dutch, Spanish, and many others. Some of the versions are available for download, so if you happened to be in an area with no cell phone coverage, you can still view the downloaded version. Oh, it also has a daily reading option, so you can read two chapters from the Old Testament, and one chapter from the New Testament. I use this option daily.
Pandora is a unique radio station like application. You enter a song name, or artist, and it will then play songs by that artist, as well as similar genre. If you enter Garth Brook, then it will play consecutively songs by him and the country music genre by other artist, e.g., Clint Black. Choose Irish Tenors, and you'll get a lot of old traditional gospels. Selecting Thumbs up or Thumbs Down refine your music selection for that genre. Its really kewl.
One other program worth mentioning is Shazam. This program listens to whatever song is being played on your radio, TV or whatever music is playing, and after a few seconds it will tell you the name of the song! Very kewl!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
