Company Family Days

You might remember the company family weekend that was held in the fall of 2014. There were only 21 employees with a total of ~70 family members. Roughly 2 years later, the number of employees has reached  85 and with families, the total number of people is about 352.B note: 148 attended. 


The first family weekend was appropriately labeled "satu" meaning one. This was "dua" meaning two. Easy, right? I'm not quite sure I see the connection but the theme of the weekend involved pirates along with the following tags: develop, unity, achievement (DUA).This was the backdrop for photos of the event if you chose to do it.

To reach the hotel, we drive through Cilegon. In the first photo you might notice rain on the windshield. 

By the time we reached the hotel it was no longer raining and there was a fabulous breeze. It was almost chilly (for here (B says it was 30C (86F))). Once there, the employees had a meeting so I had some time to shoot some video and stills of the ocean. It was so interesting. Very strong waves. I can still feel the breeze. Aaaahhhhh! And off in the distance you can see the island of Sangiang and then further away you can see the southern tip of Sumatra.

For those of you viewing this on a desktop or laptop, here is some video of the ocean.

After the employee meeting and snacks, the employees had a long team building session. The spouses             ( which were predominantly wives) had a craft and cooking session and there was a kids program for children. I know there were a few spouses of the male persuasion but I don't know where they went if they were at the hotel. It's possible the male spouses arrived in the evening.
In my group of ladies there were a few who spoke some English (and they were very helpful) but it was a decoupage project so it was pretty easy to follow along. I know words like "tipis" means thin (as in apply the glue thin) and varnish is nearly the same word in both languages as is decoupage. So, for my project I selected the smallest thing I could to make the project easier. We had a choice of paper dinner napkins for the picture. Most of the ladies chose a larger wooden piece and really went to town with pictures and even painting on more decoration.

As it turns out, I won a prize for technique. In the words of the teacher, because I focused on a smaller project I could concentrate on technique and she was impressed by my technique. There were 3 prizes. Each prize was a bamboo grass woven handbag. The kicker? Once we won the bags, we had to decorate them as well using decoupage. Here's my bag.

While the three "winners" decorated their prize the rest of the ladies enjoyed a cooking class. I don't remember what they learned how to make but it smelled good.


These instruments are called angklung. 

The angklung is a bamboo instrument native to West Java. There are bamboo tubes and a bamboo frame. Each tube is carved to create a single tone when being vibrated. I wrote about the angklung a long time ago when we were fortunate enough to catch a performance of an angklung group. (B note: there are 7 different notes. You know, do, re, mi, fa...)

After the crafty session and kids play time, the ladies and the children all had lessons in how to play the angklung. In the evening the group gave a performance. 

B got some video. If you can see the video ( on a desktop or laptop) it is worth watching a few times. Once to listen to the music. A second time to enjoy some of the children who shook the angklung the whole way through the song. Watch it a third time to keep an eye on the hands of this master conductor. Each note has a specific hand signal. While this piece was played slowly, later on he sped up the tempo. 

Much later in the evening, everyone was invited to learn how to play the instrument. At that point sometimes my note barely rattled once he was going to fast!
Another portion of the evening was dedicated to tube dancing. I don't know what else to call it. Couples were encased in a cloth "tube." The object was to dance inside the tube and when the music stopped, the couple had to fully cover their heads inside the fabric tube. It was pretty funny to watch. The volunteers were very good sports.

Pretty sunset that evening.

The hotel has been renovating and as part of the renovations they've redone the pool area. Night shot.

In this shot you can see why it is now an infinity pool. If you stand in the right spot it appears to blend into the ocean. Looks pretty nice! The outdoor gazebo is new as well. They've also redone the restaurant.

This pool photo was taken the next morning and as you can see the seas are much more calm. In exchange for the cool breezes, we got still, hot air!

After breakfast, the entire assembly was divided into smaller groups and we got a bus tour of the plant site under construction. I have no pictures. Photos were not allowed except in a couple of spots and the photos wouldn't have shown much. Let's just say they are definitely moving forward! The place is no longer just an empty plot of land.

After the tour and lunch we headed back to town. The trip out to the hotel on Friday morning took about 2 hours. The trip back to town took 3.5 hours. We had some great storm clouds to look at on the way home.

I'm including a couple of map shots so you can understand the location of the hotel, the plant site, etc. The red marker is the plant site. The hotel is located near the lower left corner of this image: the Hotel Mambruk Anyer. It's a 20-30 minute trip ( at a good time, on a good day) between the two locations.

You might find this image interesting as well. The red marker is the plant site. The hotel is just south of the plant site along the western coastline. Please take note of the name of the island off to the west: Krakatau! You might have heard of it.

Thanksgiving Day

Catching up on posting this:
My group of crafty ladies decided to celebrate American Thanksgiving on November 24. There are only a few Americans in my group so most of the group had never experienced an American Thanksgiving. One of our newer members from the US wanted to host the event. Everyone brought something. We had 2 turkeys but also dishes from Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Denmark, Brazil, The Netherlands, and Iran. I'm sure I'm forgetting a country or two. We had too many desserts: Red velvet cheesecake cake ( layer of cheesecake and layers of red velvet cake enrobed in a white chocolate ganache, pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, a nut bread, chocolate mousse cake. I won't even begin to list the side dishes.

Our hostess set a lovely table (or rather 2 tables) as there were 16 of us at the lunch.

 Just a portion of the food

Folks at work were asking B what we were doing for Thanksgiving. He said I was having a fabulous meal and that he was probably having instant Mie noodles. Note: I brought him an array of leftovers for a nice meal as well. I even brought some dessert for him.

We got started on our celebrating at 9 am. Everyone delivered their items to the kitchen and then quite a few of us had a workshop in knitting socks "toe-up." Most of the ladies that knit had always knitted them top-down. After seeing several of us knitting "toe-up", Danielle was kind enough to teach a class. I have knitted a bunch of socks this way but there are always issues so a refresher was in order.

So much concentration...

 And helping others...

 I helped some of the ladies with the cast on. I have that solidly nailed down.

Sock update: Several of the ladies have finished 2 socks already! Mine are about a third completed.

There was a lot of eating and a lot of posing for photographs. Actually it was a 5-hour photoFEST. Here's the entire group after lunch!

This Thanksgiving celebration was also a chance for all of us to formally say goodbye to 3 of our members who are moving on: L TO R Joy, Penny and Stephanie. As has become tradition when members of long standing depart, we have all come together to create paper-pieced tiny squares which are then put into a pattern around a center embroidered piece by one of our members. The mini-quilts are then framed. Each one really gets personalized. You can see the one on the left is more pastels for example. We had to do these in a rush and after first call I actually made 10 of the squares. There are 2-3 in each of these and the rest went into the "extras" with blocks that arrived too late. We have a start on the next mini-quilt already. No one else is leaving that we know of in the near future.

One of these ladies left last weekend, one next weekend and the third will depart right after the first of the year. I will miss then all tremendously. Terrific ladies.

 There was a lot of fun and laughter on that day (check out the turkey hat!)

There was a lot of horsing around...

But there was also a lot of this...

 And a lot of this...

Silk Farm

I decided Heritage Society Explorer group activities once a week was really too frequent. Others in my group felt the same. In addition, quite a few members of my group left the country over the summer. As a result, my Explorer group didn't really do much during the fall. This left many Wednesdays unscheduled for me and that meant B could have the car/driver for trips out to the plant site. A win/win.

However, I have friends in a couple of other Explorer groups. One of the groups invited me to join them on a guided tour of a silk farm in Bogor. Traffic into Bogor is usually OK in the mornings. It took us  a little over 1.5 hours to get there. The trip back in the afternoon took over 2.5 hours.

This place is called Rumah Sutera Alam. Translated in Google Translate it means "home natural silk." It's located near the Presidential Palace#2 and the Botanical Gardens. We've driven past the palace before but so far we haven't found ourselves at the gardens. Rumah Sutera Alam is a family run business started by our guide's parents.The guide explained they refer to it as "silk for human life." The farm provides what they need for their family, they employ people and they also train people to raise silkworms.

The house and the gardens are gorgeous!  I could have just sat there all day watching all of the butterflies and birds. It made me miss the various gardens we've planted over the years. This is especially true of the last house in Kentucky where we planted a very large native plant garden and enjoyed so many butterflies and birds. So pretty.

They also grow a lot of fruit on the grounds. In these shots you see dragonfruit plants.

Let's get back to talking about silk. 

How does it all start? They buy silk worm "eggs" and "allow them to hatch." They buy special silk worms. Then after they rest a bit, they start feeding them. The special silk worms are fed special leaves: mulberry leaves. The special silk worms are actually fed a variety of about 6 types of mulberry leaves. They have 2 hectares (almost 5 acres) which includes the home and gardens but they grow a lot of mulberry shrubs as well. They cannot grow all the leaves they need here so they do have other fields in other locations. In the background you can see mulberry bushes. They prune them to keep them short for easy picking I suspect. A member of the group asked if they do anything with the berries. He said they did not. I figure birds will get most of them anyway. Also in this shot you can see that umbrellas are often used as a replacement for a sun bonnet! We took a walk through the mulberry fields.

Probably a shelter for the field workers? It was a nice spot in the shade for our tour.

Here are the silkworms waking up and starting to eat! Their happy temporary home is a large tray.

A closeup! Not very pretty.

The silk worms eat and eat and eat and then they spin a cocoon. Once the cocoon is done, the cocoon is captured and then it is spun into thread.

It takes 12 cocoons to make 1 thread.  They undo 12 cocoons and spin them together.

Once they have individual threads, these are spun together with 5-18 threads depending on the durability and thread thickness desired.

Once they have the thread, the thread is woven into cloth. A weaver can make 3 meters of fabric per day.

We learned that not all silk worms make the same quality of silk. These two skeins are both natural color just from different silk worm varieties.