The Power of The Cross

Oh to see the dawn
Of the darkest day;
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

This the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us,
Took the blame, bore the wrath -
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Oh to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Every bitter thought,
Every evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

This the power...

Now the daylight flees,
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as it's Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two;
Dead are raised to life;
Finished! the victory cry.

This the power...

Oh to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

This the power of the cross:
Son of God, slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.

GREAT Job for IPAC !!

Tonight, is IPAC's first debut, I'd say. This is the first time they had a performance with Gamelan group from Washington DC, _and_ Gamelan/Dance group from Minnesota, _and_ almost 400 spectators! It was really good! I can't believe I was in it either :p

The Gamelan group from DC is called Gamelan Mitra Kusuma. They played the Balinese Gamelan. There were about 12 of them, and I think only 3 Indonesians, the rest are either Chinese or Americans. Isn't it amazing? I heard they had been playing as a group for five.. years. No wonder, they played really really good. I was truly amazed.

Not only that, the gamelan group from Minnesota is called Friends of the Gamelan. They played the Javanese Gamelan. Similarly, there were about 12 of them, and mostly are Americans!! They played really good, too! And the dancers danced one of Javanese dances. Sorry I don't recall the name of the dance, but their dresses look certainly different from my dress, as I danced a Balinese dance.

Still, there is a group playing bamboo Angklung, which is majority Americans, too, some are seniors. Angklung is a set of traditional Indonesian instruments, and the sound is like.. hitting on bamboo, or flute. Oh I certainly enjoyed their songs!! They were those songs I used to sing in elementary or high schools, such as "Ayo Mama". I miss home.. :/

Yah, I guess I do miss home. It was a wonderful evening, except that nobody came to see me perform :'(, except Renny. Thanks to Renny for being so understanding and came to watch eventhough she had had other plans for the evening. I can never say thank you enough for your coming. The Lord has graciously provided her at the right time, when no one else was around to make me not feel lonely. I came to remember the song, "What A Friend We Have in Jesus". Jesus is always here for me, anytime, anywhere. He was there watching me dance, too :'), and the friends I have in Jesus are like Him. I certainly didn't expect Renny to come, but she came. I am glad.

Maybe in a way, I should learn not to expect too much from other people, too. As people can never satisfy. This is one of those things I have so much struggle to recover from, and change. But once again the Lord gently reminds me, and I am convicted. Thank you God for your everlasting love and grace. Bound me close to you forever.

Makanan Indo emang top

Gimana gimana orang indo kalo makan masakan indo memang selalu cocok yah?? setuju ga si. Rencana mau diet aja sampe batal, atau lebih tepatnya "give myself an excuse" hehehe, abis itu makanan enak2 puool. Hari ini khususnya, ada 4 orang IPAC member yang ulang taun, lalu kita pada potluck jd jumlah makanannya bejibun. Plus yang masak kan kebanyakan udah ibu-ibu..

Ada botokan ikan teri, ayam goreng, wings (beli kali yah), kuah babat, kuah bakso, lumpia basah, urap-urap (yummy!!), bolu gulung, cherry croissant, mie goreng, wuih and so on, bbrp lagi aku ga makan soalnya. Tapi pokoknya banyak macem.
Oh well cukup tentang makanan.

Latian narinya juga sip kok. IPAC bakal show 2 tarian: Panyembrana dan Ganjen. Aku bakal nari Panyembrana nya, bersama 5 orang lain. Udah sip lah, cuma perlu senyuum aja :). Makasih banyak buat Pak Ngurah yang udah ngajarin saja dengan bener2 sabarnya.
Yang ngga tahan itu lho.. jam kaaareeeet.. masa meeting jam 1 siang jadi jam 3.45, latian nari dari jam 3 sampe mundur jam 5.30 sore!! :p

Relaxing day

This afternoon, my big group had a group outing. We went to the Arlington Park Race Track to watch horse racing! Actually, more fun than that, we bet of who'd won the races! :)

Well, of course I didn't bet too much, and Motorola gave each of us $20 coupon for food and the bet. So I had some "free" money. At first I wasn't that excited about it, but it was proven to be FUN! My boss, George, explained to us how to read the race guide and make bets. They have different kinds of bets: which horse is first winner, which one is second, or which one will be in the first 3 best positions. They have more: which horses will win 1st, 2nd, 3rd position, and all those. Wow.
Good thing I played closely with a friend, so both of us decided to stop at some point and didn't gamble/bet anymore. I had $6 left :)

After getting back to office to get our laptops, I didn't feel like working anymore, or more like I wanted to go home early since it was early, 5 pm! But my friend thought of playing ping-pong.. so of course without hesitation I said yes! ^_^ I love ping-pong. After playing couple times, I actually feel I'm getting better at it hehehe.. finally. Maybe once I got back home, I'll be able to play with my dad better than last year. Oh how I am excited!!

Aah.. so much for the day. I went home and practice my pendet a bit. I still forget some portions here and there, but I think I can manage. Can't wait to perform this Saturday. Though I'm sad some friends whom I expect would come to see, wouldn't be able to :/

Well, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I won't get nervous ^_^.

Lilis is coming

Meanwhile, my sister is on her way to Midway airport. One of her best friends from high school, Lilis, is coming. She's gonna spend about a week, I think, here with us.
Hope this will be a good weekend. I can't wait for the stuffs we're going to do, or places we're going to visit, but can't wait to finish my TONS of work also :(

Hmm.. I'm thinking of going back to my blogger. Always have the thought of pouring my mind onto it, just never want to make the time to do it :p
I feel down lately though, just cause a good friend of mine at work happen to start giving me lies. I mean, for so many things. Oh my mom knows how much I'm serious in such things, especially with the fact that this is my good friend. Oh I hate it. I don't hate the person, and I won't give up on him cause the Lord won't. But God, this is TOUGH.
I wonder though, why do people lie just to make someone feel better? Not talking about life and death here.
And why do people still lie, while knowing that the other person is aware he/she is lying, and hate that ever more?

Tonight I had Indian dinner. Well, 3 of my coworkers bought dinner at a place called India House Restaurant, and then dropped by one Jai's townhouse. His wife cooked nasi briyani also, which was great. Yah.. another long night, though I'm glad our boss agrees to pay for our dinner :)

And tomorrow.. is the day of Chase Corporate Challenge, the 3.5 run/walk I registered for. I'm going to go with 3 other coworkers, from the Arlington Park metra station, to downtown, then walk 30 mins to Grant Park, and I guess we'll start from there. I certainly won't be able to run that far :D, so hopefully someone will be kind enough to walk with me when I'm tired, so I don't be by myself and get lost at some point hehe.
Hope the weather will be great also, no rain, no cold. Let's see how it goes.

I got ear-pierced!

I'm sitting here, on the corner of my bed, right next to the window. As I'm feeling down, I opened the blind, hoping to catch some stars. The sky is dark though. It's been raining for about an hour now. As if the sky cried on my behalf.

I watch the rain fall on ground, sparkling, maybe as sparkling as these new earrings I now have on my ears. I just got ear-pierced today :p. Not that I'm super happy with it. Though I actually am, but.. I am so sad too. So sad.

It's always during these times that I miss Nan the most. I wish you were here. I wish you took a masters program here :). I wish. I wish. Though.. I know I can just sms you, right? And you'd reply it in an instant. I wish I have an hour a day phone call. Something that I took for granted before but now I.. feel like a loss. I always miss my mom, too. Mom, come here.

And I start questioning myself. What would it be like, if I have Jesus here, you know. Well, I kinda have Jesus, but it's hard to feel Him. It's hard to talk one way and not hearing anything. Or maybe I'm closing my ears.

Many times, MANY times, I wish I'd lived by myself. At least I won't feel ignored, on my face. I guess I've always been on myself. Though I was hoping things might change a bit with some new people.. no, no way, things never work out. Aah.. what a life.

Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe I'm sweating little stuffs.

I had my ear pierced today. Yay! After all these times of wanting to but not daring to, I finally showed up and told the lady, "I want my ears pierced." I was so afraid (honestly) that after the lady finished piercing my ears, and began to explain the "after-care procedures".. I started to faint and really, got fainted. I was conscious, but certainly felt dizzy. Good thing I brought a bar of chocolate, and the lady passed me a glass of water. I guess I was too worried about feeling pain, get infected, or.. I don't know.

The lady said I had to be very careful in cleaning my ears in the next 2 weeks. Then I should still clean it with certain solution for the next 6-8 weeks. Then.. I can start changing earrings, but not take them off for a long period, for at least the next one year. It's a long time yah?

I feel much better now. And the rain has stopped falling, though I can still hear some thunders. I'm gonna go for a shower. Will have to clean my ears though, and I'm afraid :p uuh.. hopefully I don't hurt myself. After that.. maybe work a little bit, and bid you good night..

Listen to the radio.

I'm right now, at this very moment, enjoying my saturday morning, bright bright day, feeling refreshed and all, and most specially.. with my special breakfast. Which I made myself, but that's okay.. cause it's SO GOOD. I toasted two slices of (frozen) waffles, put five fresh strawberries on them, then.. pour a bit of honey around the waffles and strawberries! I know! I'm inspired by those I found in the restaurants. It tastes SO GOOD, I can believe it!! You have to try it!! But hint hint, you have to get the sweet strawberries one :)

By the way, my original intention to blog is not about these strawberries and pancakes. I was listening on the K-love radio couple weeks back, and have wanted to blog about it, but haven't got a chance! Oh my life has been so busy. And will always be.. for at least the next three months.

It was in between the songs, that a presenter gave this message. The message actually came from another source, but I don't remember where. I only remember the message, and it's enlightening. Well, I remember that since my teenage life.. my parents always told me, that there are many religions, many beliefs in the world, but we were all the same. We were all human, we believed there was God (or gods in some beliefs), we were social people and tried to be nice and helpful to other people, and so on and so forth.
I used to believe it, you know, although I did feel something strange about it. Until later years when I finally met Jesus, learned about Him, what's different about Him, that Jesus is God and the one and only true God.. I feel, NO, different religions are different, but I could never spell out WHY, and I have never argued about it.

I kinda forgot what exactly the presenter said, but I was urged to stand up for the truth I believe in. I belive in one God -- my Father in heaven, in Jesus, the Son of God, who came down from heaven to earth and gave Himself to save me and all people on the earth. And I believe that only Jesus Christ can save me and give me eternal life. Jesus is my source of strength and my source of everything in this world. No other god or men can give me what I really need.
Now if I believe that, how can I also agree to other religions/beliefs that say, "We have several gods. They used to be heroes in this or that kingdom, they were rulers in the world. They're gone but let's worship them so that we can receive blessings and safety from them."
I feel like asking something from my peers who certainly can't provide for me, and many times even for themselves.
Or another belief, "It's all in our hearts. Think about the good things, be patient, be loving, be happy, and you will find peace."
NO, that's so not true! People hope for good things, but bad things do happen. I try to be patient and loving, but still I find no peace. I don't even know why I should do such things..
Now that I write about it, I think about robots. We, human, create robots. They are not perfect, according to us. Robots are very limited to what we design them to do. One robot is to clean up the house. One robot is to assemble a certain part in the factory. One robot is to jiggle and be cute (like those dog robots.. :D). But whether we agree or not, if a robot is having a mechanical problem, or dying battery, the robot cannot ask another robot, to fix the problem, or to replace the battery. The owner has to do it. We knows when the robot needs fixes, and what to do.

Last week, I had the urging to go to church (after being absent for a month :p), and I was so blessed. I am very blessed, that I decided to buy the sermon CD hehee.. so I can remind myself later. The pastor said that, it takes MUCH bigger efforts to believe that the world, and its complexities, happened by mere evolution. It's like answering yes to: "In the beginning, there was nothing in the world, then BANG! smokes gather, galaxies, stars, and planets started to evolve. After a million years, life came on earth inside the seas. After another million years, these microscopic life form themselves to become plants, or animals.."
If we continue, we'll say that babies come on the earth by mere incident that the parent's relationship yield on a life. Uh-huh. How could a baby have a nose, two eyes, one mouth, two hands, two feet, and all that're inside the body.. the brain, the cells, the heart.. I'm sure it takes less effort to say that someone creates the baby, rather than, "It just happens that a 'baby' comes out, not something else."

Nevertheless, though I've grown to know God more and more, and I've been learning about His miracles every day, but.. I'm still a woman of little faith. But I will try to stand up for this faith I believe in, and hope that God will strengthen me, and by the power of His holy spirit, grow my faith.

Web usability

After working for about 2 months on Web design, which is my first formal project, I started to think Web design is not that hard. It's only a matter of knowing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and tools such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage. But it wasn't long till I was told to improve the Web application I'm working on, then I started to dig into how the Web can best serve its customers.

The technical jargon is Web Usability. They talk about what people look for when they browse the Web, what people expect from a webpage they open or happen to visit, how various information (and much of it) is best provided for the readers, and the list goes on. For the first time, I feel like actually do not know anything about Web design, and I had just learned the basics of it.

So.. having learned from some of the mistakes people do when they design their webpage, and for the sake of 'practice makes perfect' and 'we learn from our past', I am going to.. change the font I use in this blog to be bigger than what it has always been (hey, do you notice?), and use black for the content color, so that you.. yes, you, can be more comfortable reading it now. I mean, I understand some of you have really good eyes, so don't feel offended, you can still make the font size smaller through your browser settings :).

Romans 1:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. ..The righteous will live by faith.

As what has always happened in the past, there are times when I really want to write stories in this blog, but just can't make it.
What have I missed? A LOT!
Since my last post, it's been my sister's birthday, Christmas, New Year, Chinese New Year, Valentine, not mentioning my activities at church and other things, some of which have gone so well.. God has been so good to me, and I really want to share that!
Oh well, 'nasi sudah menjadi bubur', I can't backup, but I can go on with the time I have now.
And I am sorry if any of you are waiting.. and waiting.. and nothing is coming up here. So yah, to make up for all those times, I'll give a brief on each one. But.. where should I start? :)

Christmas!
I had a wonderful christmas. I did. Imelda and her two brothers (Steven and Ivan) came up here!

Though it was pretty tiring, since you know, I'm restless, and got myself stuck in preparing for food, dessert, and cleaning the house. Well ok that's fine. The three built an 'island', per say, in the living room. And since during the holiday, many places were closed (and it was cold, too), we spend most of the day at home :D watching TV..
You know what's interesting? The three siblings are always quarrelling (in friendly ways though) and pointing to one another, but they're also like the best friends in the world, for example when they're watching TV.

My Sister's Birthday
Thanks to Imelda's gracious heart, she went out at 11 PM on Christmas night, believing that a store somewhere was open. Can you believe it?? I couldn't. I kept telling her not to go cause most probably there isn't any store out there that was open at the midnight of Christmas.. no no.. But she came back with an ice cream cake for my sister!

It was not only an ice cream cake, it was a Baskin Robins' ice cream cake, and it tasted great! The picture was the only one (from several) that my sister allowed me to put on the web. Oh well she also bought two big pints of strawberry and cookie n creme ice cream. Mel.. we're not done eating it till now!!

Flock Service
You've heard this before, haven't you? This time my flock helped with the Children's Ministry at church. We were divided into several smaller groups, and my group had Shirley, Jennine (who also works at Motorola), Lillian, and Kim. The first task was to cut four sheets of colorful fabrics into smaller pieces (the size of a bandana), then using fabric paints, we put marks on it: the cross, the devil, mr. yuk (opposite to a smiley face), and something.. I forgot. The second task was to re-arrange children's story books by putting the characters and items back into their respective pages. Woa, that wasn't easy. The book was made out of fabric by the way. It was interesting.
Then... after we're done, we head out to Jeannie's place for a big Korean BBQ. Well, though I have to disagree with most of the group, but I really didn't think it was very great. They had only 5 main items in the bbq: beef, pork (belly), onion, mushroom, and lettuce. I of course raved for the veggie, though I had several slices of the beef, too. Honestly, I wasn't really there for the food, but the gathering. They're really nice people! :)

That's about the major events going on last month. Besides that maybe.. I struggled a lot with a lot of work and trying to keep up with my bible-in-a-year schedule. However the Lord has been really supportive and encouraging. I am still on, on track, and eager for it! Yeah!