A spirit of a woman

Last saturday I did a charity work in Ciawi, Bogor. I teach the teachers from a specialized senior high school. The objective of this charity work is to contribute in Indonesia's education at a grass root level by improving their knowledge.

In this opportunity I met with one extraordinary woman with her extraordinary team. Her name is Ibu Dina, she's the principal of this school. She's also the founder of this superb school. This school was started couple years back then with only 30+ students at her garage. Currently this school has 900+ students from various level of society.

Not only her spirit that become a foundation of this school that inspired me, but also the ideas that she put into action. The ideas that enable many of her students to keep study and leverage their family social status at the end of the days. Not only she work so hard to get funding for a scholarship, but also she manage to get "a job" that her student could do. For example she get a job from Sucofindo to input the data. The money earn from this job is used to fund the scholarship.

Another effort that I heard is that she gathered all the students parent. She then asked about their job and abilities. Further she try to find a way to improve their economy by channeling their products. For example if one of the parents producing shoes, then she try to find a way to sell that shoes more by synergized all the available resources / network. Fascinating !!

Lesson learned from this tough lady is :

1. Never wait to make a change or to make your passion come true, just do it !

2. Synergy is the way of the champion

3. All dream is possible if we really want to achieve it

Keep on fighting SMK Wikrama !!!! God bless you and all your staff.

Easier...not the right thing

My colleagues Cindy (she is a very inspiring & nice colleagues, thanks Cindy) have a favorite anecdote. She said :

"There is a story about a man who is looking for his stuff (that has been missing) in an area. Somebody else ask the man where do he lose it. He answered that he lose it over there while appointing somewhere else. 

Then the other man ask why he isn't looking for the stuff there at the first place. The man simply answered because at here is bright while there is dark"

Moral of the story is that sometimes we just doing what we do because it is easier, not because it is the right thing to do. Not only in work but also sometime in our life. 

For example since producing a new product / flavor is easier than enlarge current market size / penetration then we choose to keep produce a new product, rather than doing the right thing - doing penetration. 

At our social life we prefer not to talk to our foes just because it's easier than speak to them directly. Other sample is that you prefer to deliver a feedback for your subordinate in the form of email, since it's easier, although we both know that face-to-face conversation is still the most effective way to deliver feedback.

So, please contemplate, think about yourself, are you good enough in choosing the right thing (and not the easy thing). Just do what you have to do (in a positive manner).

Cloud

This picture was taken in Jakarta, Pantai Indah Kapuk to be precisely. We just get down from a boat that take us the whole day for taking picture of birds when we see the beautiful sky. It's really great...the cloud is hanging on the sky while the sunset gave a reddish color of the sky.

Unfortunately I don't bring my GND Filter (more on : SinghRay or Cokin), so the dynamic range is hard to catch. That's why I use Adobe photoshop to do a manual HDR (High Dynamic Range : a technique to blend a different exposure level to get an optimum dynamic range). I get the sky around -2 stop lower, while the nearby swamp around +1/3 EV.

I use f4 as the apperture, more because I also don't bring my tripod to support my camera. That's why I need a quite "fast" shutter speed, unless I want my picture shake.

Anyway this is the result :

Canon 350D | Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS @ 17mm

f4 | 1/40 sec's | ISO 800 | Handhold - leaned again the wall

HDR using Adobe photoshop | Layering is used in this picture

Feel free to comment it ...

Walahar

Walahar is a small-medium size dam near Jakarta. East Kerawang to be more precise. Getting to this beautiful place is quite easy, exit from Cikampek Highway in East Kerawang. Turn right and go straight until you see Texmaco billboard on the right. This dam built by the netherland government long time ago.

I'm not that lucky, so when I got there the water level is a bit low, it doesn't flew. But I got a photograph that I like. I hope you enjoy it.

Canon 40D | Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS @ 17mm | Velbon CX 560 Tripod | Remote Switch

f11 | 0.3 seconds | Hoya CPL Filter | Hitech 0.6 Soft Gradual ND Filter | Hyperfocal distance technique is used

Photoshop for Raw processing, saturation, noise removal, a minor burning & dodging