ART GARDEN AT SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM

I know the school holidays are coming to an end, but for some schools in Jakarta, the kids will once again be on a long break during the Idul Fitri holidays. So here's an idea of where you can bring your kids: the Art Garden exhibition at Singapore Art Museum. It's still open until 1 September 2013 so you still have almost 2 months to go and check it out. If you want your kids to experience art, and unfortunately it's not that easy here in Jakarta, take a short plane ride here cause it's worth it :)

Walter the bunny - probably the best part of the exhibition if you ask me :)

Hansel & Gretel malay style in the "Enchanted Garden City"

Doing activities in "Around the Day in Eighty Worlds" - felt like being in Alice in Wonderland

LANDscape in the box - boxes filled with familiar landscapes of Singapore

SUMMER HOLIDAY IDEAS

The "summer" holidays have started... Clearly in Indonesia you don't really feel the difference in the weather but if you check some popular blogs, you'll see many many posts about summer inspiration, and I love reading them! I haven't had the chance to browse for a really long time, and I'm so happy I finally got to do it today while helping my dad play host to a family gathering for my uncles and aunts. While they were busy having amongst themselves (and my son was busy with his dad), I found some really great ideas:

This is a picnic inspiration post by Design Mom. Love the idea of fruits and salad in a jar! She also talks about other things besides food, such as location, cutlery, etc. My parents are building a pool in their backyard, and I can't wait to get some friends over and have a picnic!

This one came from the uber talented Jordan Ferney, a post about flavoured lemonades, which of course is the drink of choice for any hot day!

Doesn't this look awesome? Instead of watching a movie indoors, you hang a white sheet outside, put some blankets, make popcorn and lemonade and watch the movie outside with your friends. This post was from sfgirlbybay.

GINDO 2013

A couple of months ago, YUM was invited to GINDO 2013 conference, a conference organized by students of various schools in Indonesia, to gather fellow students and discuss solutions for global issues occurring both in the local community and throughout the world. YUM was one of the NGOs that took part in the NGO Fair and in the ActionX activity where around 20 students visited our projects and did various activities with YUM sponsored kids here in Jakarta. I found this video of GINDO 2013 recently and thought it was really well done, and worth sharing (and you see a glimpse of YUM's booth at minute 1:38). Working in an NGO myself, it's important for us to know that the future generation does care and that they're aware of the importance of continuing our jobs in the future :)

HOW TO MAKE AN URBAN ORGANIC GARDEN

I'm not a huge fan of gardening to be honest. I much prefer baking and cooking. But I do feel that we all need to know how to grow our own food. We're so used to buying our food at the market or the supermarket, that we have no idea what exactly it takes to grow food. This is especially true for people living in cities, like me :)

So when the Jakarta International School (JIS) asked whether the YUM Organic Farm was interested to conduct a 2-day training on how to make an urban organic garden, I jumped on the occasion. YUM's Organic Farm Coordinator, Oleh, was also excited to do it, and I think he did an excellent job teaching teachers and 7th and 8th grade students at Sekolah Musika.

Sekolah Musika is a school in Ciputat that caters to children from low income families. The owner of the foundation that runs the school used to work at JIS, and she would like her students' horizons to be broadened just like kids in international schools. That's why she has asked JIS and YUM's help to teach her students how to grow an urban organic garden.

Oleh starts by doing a 1-hour in-class presentation where the students are taken through all the steps in organic farming

The land is then cleared, marked and the soil is turned over

After a grueling 3-hour process, we were able to finish making 4 beds. These beds are made entirely from soil, the cheapest alternative to cement or bricks, and made in such a way that it will last up to 10 years.

The side of the beds are then covered with grass.

Finally the planting area is turned over and fertilizer (rice chaff and chicken manure) is added.

This is the fun part, when the children can start planting!

The whole gang at the end of the 2-day activity :)

60 YEARS OF PAK RADEN'S ART

It's a real pity that not many young Indonesians know about Pak Raden and the puppet show he once created called "Si Unyil".... As I was driving to the exhibition last Sunday portraying 60 years of dedication to art by Pak Raden (or Drs. Suyadi), I realized that my son knows only cartoons and sophisticated animations! It felt nice to introduce to him another type of "cartoon".

Pak Raden is a character created by an artist called Suyadi, who I just recently found out, spent 3 years studying animation in Paris! I knew him as the creator of a televised puppet show in the 1980s that was watched by almost all children in Indonesia. What I didn't know was that he was also a visual artist and animator... The exhibition I saw last Sunday was a real joy, especially for someone having lived in Paris, because he stereotypes french people and indonesians seeing France for the first time :)

Pak Raden teaching a song to the children who came to hear him tell a story.

Everyone wanted to be in the picture with Pak Raden.

An old lady's opinion of the wayang: "The anatomy is all wrong, and the proportions too.. my God!"

Better to make a woman blush, than to make her laugh. I myself prefer laughing but at jokes, not at the man :)

In any foreign country, it's easy to pretend to be someone we're not. Here the lady tells journalists she's the daughter of the future king of Java :)

If you want to know more about Pak Raden, you can see videos of him entitled "Terima kasih Pak Raden" on Youtube, visit his website, like his facebook page or read my friend Kyra's visit to see Pak Raden on her blog.

DAYAK CULTURE FESTIVAL

Not many people know about dayak culture and it was very refreshing when a "Dayak Culture Festival" was announced in Jakarta a few weeks ago. Since YUM has a working area in Central Kalimantan, we deal with dayak people every day, and some of our projects actually involves the preservation of the dayak culture. Unfortunately since it's still quite a remote area, not many people know about it, and the preservation projects are not as many as say in Bali or Java. As you'll see below, dayak art and handicrafts are actually quite beautiful:

One huge project that YUM is currently trying to find funding for is the construction of a Vocational Training Center not far from Palangka Raya. More than 90% of the population where our project area is situated lives below the poverty line, mainly because they lack the education and skills needed to find a decent job to feed their family and improve their lives. One of the skills we are hoping to teach involves dayak culture and handicrafts because a) there is hardly any dayak handicrafts sold in the area and b) to keep the dayak culture alive. If you want to know more about this project, you can see a video that we made: http://vimeo.com/40845388

HEC PARIS VISITS YUM CIPANAS

I had a moment of pride a few weeks ago when a group of Master's students from HEC Paris, a business school with an excellent reputation, came to visit YUM Cipanas. Having studied in Paris, I sometimes wonder what could have been if I had continued my studies or stayed in Paris and continued working there. Was coming back to Jakarta the right choice? But all those questions were answered when I saw that these students, some of them my age, were in awe with the projects we have at YUM, and appreciated my work and what I had to say about it. That made my day..... and my week..... and my month :))