Preparation for another examination

This time round, it is for his violin grade 8 exam. We are revising and learning to indentify different styles and features of different musical/ classical era/period. I emphasise on "we" as the mummy is also learning all this. 

Origami dan Paper Planes

Gara-gara Aqila, semua orang di rumah jadi demam origami, terutama paper planes origami. Apalagi yang bisa terbang bagus (tidak semua origami pesawat bisa terbang ya, termasuk yang di atas ini)

Yang satu ini hasil karya ibunya Aqila, F15 jet fighter, sesudah sukses mengikuti petunjuk mas Tadashi Mori di youtube. Klik channel dia ya, bagus sekali channelnya, penuh dengan bermacam origami modern dan kontemporer rekaan / ciptaan si mas ini. Mau bikin pesawat terbang? Silakan. Mau bikin kalajengking, naga dan lainnya? Ada juga di sini.

Ini linknya : http://youtu.be/_WnAsrh3XvQ

Yang di bawah ini hasil karya Aqila, sudah diukocoba dan bisa terbang bagus hehe.


After burner plane


Swallow

- Dyah on mobileblogging

Sharing means double the understanding

 
A super late post. This was written during adik Prisha's preparation for ABRSM violin grade 1 exam. She has since passed with Distinction and now plays even more beautifully!

Here It goes:

Adik Prisha is going to take her violin exam in two weeks time. Her three chosen pieces are ready, her scale is also good, her knowledge on aural is well on the way, however, she is still not ready with her sight-reading.

What is sight-reading? It is one section in the exam where the candidate is tested on his/her ability to play part of a piece almost instantly, within thirty seconds after the music score is laid out in front of him/her. The candidate needs to play it as perfect as possible, complete with correct dynamics and expression :-P

Aqila was personally instructed by his violin instructor, who happens to be the violin instructor in his school thus adik Prisha's instructor as well, to help her in this area. Aqila took the task very seriously. He prepared a lesson plan for this! He even asked my opinion on his approach to teaching adik Prisha this subject.

And here is a video of Aqila coaching dik Prisha.

Aqila dear, i am so proud of you. Adik is now able to read music score better than before! I am sure she will do well.



- Dyah on mobileblogging

Souvenir from Racial Harmony Day 2013

Sorry Aqila, this is another late post from Bunda. 

Just wish to share with you these photos taken during the celebration at your school. 

What is Racial Harmony and why is it so important to maintain it in a multiculture society like Singapore? You can check here and here to understand better the history of commemorating racial harmony and why it is paramount for the people in Singapore to respect one another despite the differences. 

At your service, Your Majesty!

DAY 2

We started the tour very early that day, at around 6.30am. Our plan was to visit the Borobudur temple, the Prambanan temple and Rumah Pintar, some sort of children museum that Pak Fendy recommended.

It was an interesting journey to Borobudur! We saw mount Merapi at a far, people on bicycle carrying goods, perhaps to the market. The wind was cool and crisp…wonderful weather indeed.

The magnificent Borobudur temple

"Aaargh...so many steps to take!"

Transported to a different era

Nothing personal, just found this interesting :)

One of the highlight of the day!

Fresh coconut juice straight from the fruit!

About an hour later, we reached Borobudur temple and it still awed me so much after so many years have passed. The old Buddhist temple which was built around 800AD during Sailendra dinasty was as magnificent as what I have imagined it to be. I remembered my archaeologist brother mentioned to me that The Karmawibhangga relief depicts the worldly lust and sins that people do in the world and the punishment in hell, the cause and effect! Yikes. This portion of the temple is mostly covered and concealed from public eye, I think it was because the relief could be quite scary to look at! However, if you wish to see some of the reliefs, you may visit the Karmawibhangga museum just a few hundred metre away from the temple.

We spent close to three hour in the temple complex, including sipping on the fresh coconut juice, and taking the dokar ride and the free shuttle bus to and fro the temple.

Unfortunately, the great weather had turned to grey, and soon it started to rain hard. We had no choice but to cancel our trip to Prambanan temple and instead we made a stop at this simple eatery by the road side (sorry I forgot where exactly it was located at) serving brongkos dish. Brongkos is like a beef stew with black nut or buah kluwak. Tasted just ordinary to me but maybe we just did not try the brongkos at the best eatery there was hehe.

Brongkos

We headed back to the city, spent some time at Malioboro again, this time checking out a department store called Mirota Batik where we could find many variety of foods and stuff from Java and all over Indonesia, mingled with the rest of the visitors while enjoying the unique atmosphere. Be careful of pickpockets though.

We also visited The Kraton of Yogyakarta, the palace where Sultan Hamengkubuwono X is residing and the Taman Sari, a bath palace for the princesses which was built during Sultan Hamengkubuwono I era (around 1750s). Listening to the guide describing how Taman Sari must have been looked like and how it was originally used gave me a mixed feeling. You see, long time ago, the King would sit inside the tower overlooking the pool where all his concubines were taking a bath, splish splash. The King then chose one of the concubines he desired to have as his companion on that day .... yikes!  

Taman Sari

The european style Taman Sari

The long and rich story of Kraton Yogyakarta was much more welcome. Sadly, to be honest, I was not fully concentrated in listening to the explanation as I was busy with my cranky boy. Sigh...

Kraton Yogyakarta

The guards of Kraton Yogyakarta

My impression of the palace was that it was a quiet and humble palace. The complex was cool and pleasant as there were many big trees with huge canopies around. However, I personally think the palace was not kept well. There was much dust here and there but then again, the soil in Yogya town was indeed sandy, thus it was very difficult to keep things dust-free. I guess the guards and the palace-keepers had tried their very best to sweep the floor off the dust :)

We were very lucky to be able to witness the returning of the palace guards to their wards when we visited the Kraton Yogya. My boy smiled widely while posing in front of the guards marching into their compound. Very tourist like! hehehe 

We went back to our base camp dead tired but happy that day :)

Street scene - Yogya

Carry me for I am too exhausted to walk!

Lunch box drawing 2 - School series

- Posted from my iPhone

What's on at Jendela

It is the first day of school holiday. We went to Jendela gallery at the Esplanade to enjoy the exhibition.

It is called The Stage: Alive in Motion, by three Yogyakarta-based Indonesian artists: Octo Cornelius, Iwan Efendi and Doni Maulistya.


The installation is made up of various everyday materials, bamboo, woods, pipes, some gambang (gamelan) bars, violin bows and strings and a tabla :)

The artists invite audience to come forward and try to create sound or music out of their arts. It is a very hands-on installation, and audience, especially kids will definitely enjoy manipulating them :)



Unfortunately, some exhibits are quite delicate and not so sturdy, resulting malfunction on some of them. A pity.





The exhibition is on till 31 March 2013, if you are interested to check it out :) admission free.

- Posted from my iPhone

Splash splash

We have been coming here to attend lessons. So far so good :)
Photo was taken with iPhone5 native camera.

- Posted from my iPhone

Get Well card

I was down with terrible flu this weekend till yesterday (Monday). I had a very bad case of runny nose and throbbing headache.

So I spent the whole day sleeping and this was what Aqila came up with :-)

Thank you my dear...i feel better already receiving this card :-)

- Posted from my iPhone

The Emperial Flagship

The Emperial Flagship, a photo by duniaqila on Flickr.

An old photo taken around end of 2011. Aqila was crazy about Pirates and Sailships...thanks to the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

Here he was drawing and painting the Emperial Flagship, one of the ship in the movie :-)

Wake Up Sleepyhead!

Wake Up Sleepyhead!, a photo by Aqila and his gang on Flickr.

This was my submission for a photo challenge held by InstaSG (Instagram Singapore). The theme was "your view in the morning" or something like that, i kinda have forgotten the exact phrasing.

Anyway...my little boy is what i see first thing in the morning :-)

Short trip to Jakarta

We went to Jakarta during June school holiday. Aqila missed his grandparents. At the same time, i took this opportunity to bring Aqila to these historical places that i come to love.

I visited these places quite often during my 20s (which was oh so long time ago), at that time my brother was studying architecture so naturally whenever he needed to go to these places to do some research or whatever, i just tagged along with him hehe




Sunda Kelapa Harbour






National Museum










Fatahillah museum











This one i didnt manage to make a stop by. Although the sight of this ruin really was striking...in the middle of chaotic traffic of Kota Tua Jakarta. Dasaad Musin Building.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone