indi + rani = noe | kei

Finally after about 6 months, Kei's birth video is done into a 5 minutes short clip. See here:

As a staunch proponent of breastfeeding, I should be happy when the Makassar Province in Indonesia decided to draft a breastfeeding bill, right?

WRONG! I was ambiguous about it, because from the title of the legislation, it sounds that the bill is aimed towards mothers instead of the public facilities and health workers. The title of the legislation itself sounds vague: "Peraturan Daerah Air Susu Ibu". At a first glance, the title seems to "encourage" (force) mothers to breastfeed their babies... but does it imply that mothers are to be punished for not breastfeeding? It's unclear, but many interprets the law that it puts mothers in a disadvantaged position.

Vague Title, Absent Content

Anda ingat tulisan saya yang menyinggung soal Kasus Korupsi di KBRI Singapura? Nah, mereka (ex-Dubes Mochamad Slamet Hidayat dan ex-Bendahara Erizal) sudah masuk kurungan (tapi tidak kelihatan malu!). Beritanya ada di Tempo: Tersandung Sisa Renovasi.

ex- Wakil Dubes Eddie Suryanto Harijadhi, yang dulu beberapa kali main musik bersama saya dan Rani di KBRI, ternyata juga menerima uang dari proyek yang sama. Total jumlah yang mereka kantongi adalah sekitar Rp 10,1 miliar.

Today, Rani and I took Jung-Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tests, a psychometric questionnaire designed to identify certain psychological differences according to the typological theories of Carl Gustav Jung, and we found out that:

-I am an ENFJ (Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Judging)
-Rani is an INTJ (Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Judging)

So, what does it all mean in our relationship?*

We fought hard against the #1 seeded doubles team of Singapore open. Royson's powerful flat serve and Arjun's tricky net game really killed us. They always returned our serve low over the net with a slice and the balls never bounced high.

We lost 0-6 in the first set but managed to break Royson's serve in the second set secured better loss at 2-6.

Not a bad game knowing that Royson is a tennis coaching pro at Laguna Country Club and has been playing with Arjun in many tournaments.

At least we got killed by the best!

PS: Thanks to Oom Firman, Andre, Lina, Antony and wife, Mariah, Jayson, Kae Fong and Arpita.

For the last four weeks, Rani has been taking a very good care of the kids at home during my regular tennis practice with Yodhi. Yodhi and I even troubled her by adding more to the laundry basket with our smelly tennis clothes. I felt bad that she sacrificed a lot of her time for me and Yodhi almost every weekend. From time to time, Noe came with us to the courtside and helped us collect practice balls and put them into the basket. Various Sparing matches with Andre, Widiyo, Andrew and Henry really helped us in developing better doubles teamwork.

And last night, it all paid off. Yodhi never got a double fault (100% of serves in).

Dr. Mahathir Mohamad started to blog at chedet.com, including receiving comments from people too. He could be the first and only (former) country leader that blogs, and a blogger of the highest government rank - Prime Minister, that is (albeit retired).

My brother Yodhi and I have registered to play doubles at the Singapore Tennis Association's SONY ERICSSON Open 2008 on 3-11 May.

The last time we played in tournament together was perhaps in the 1980s where we toured around Java for junior tournaments. As for me, the last competitive tennis I played was when Ben Metzger and I won the State of Maine 1993 high-school doubles title.

With aging and heavier (and slower!) bodies, we don't plan to win the trophy. We just want to have fun and give younger players a hard time!

After sending our DNA sample to National Geographic's Genographic Project, I found out that, based on our Y-chromosome lab analysis, my body carries a true African blood.

But why Y-chromosome? It is something which is passed directly from father to son, unchanged, from generation to generation.

Gosh, such a bad mommy I am, I haven't written anything on Kei ever since he was born! True enough, parents dedicate a lot of resources to keep the memory of the first kid, but the resources are dwindling for the second kid and beyond. As I am the fourth kid, I really understand this, because I couldn't find any pictures or mementos related to my infancy and childhood. Sorry I digress. But with the hectic schedule of taking care two kids, I just realized that Kei didn't have as many mementos as Noe had. C'mon, I gotta be fair to both of my kids. So, now I write something about Kei's progress during the past four months.

So far, the only thing that I have written is how breastfeeding Kei has been smooth sailing. Now I will try to add more news.