Invented by Anto Tri Sugiarto, PhD, Environtmental and Standard Instrument Laboratory, Indonesian Institute of Science.
Further information: antocut@yahoo.com
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Waste Water Treatment - Advanced Oxidation Processed
Invented by Anto Tri Sugiarto, PhD, Environtmental and Standard Instrument Laboratory, Indonesian Institute of Science.
Further information: antocut@yahoo.com
Waste Water Treatment - Advanced Oxidation Processed
Invented by Anto Tri Sugiarto, PhD, Environtmental and Standard Instrument Laboratory, Indonesian Institute of Science.
Further information: antucut@yahoo.com
Monday, July 24, 2006
REPORT NO. 55: Dr. Marzuki, Aceh visited Pangandaran
Dr. Marzuki, Permata Hati Hospital played with kids of the victims at verandah of Pangandaran Grand Mosque, Sunday 23 July 2006.
REPORT NO. 54: Dr. Marzuki, Aceh visited Pangandaran
Camp in front of Pangandaran Grand Mosque for displace people, Sunday 23 July 2006. There are 24 camps in Pangandaran.
REPORT NO. 53: Dr. Marzuki, Aceh visited Pangandaran
Sergeant Suyaman received drugs from Dr. Marzuki, Permata Hati Hospital, Banda Aceh (black-stripes shirt) for tsunami victims in Pangandaran Rescue Post on Sunday, 23 July 2006. Death toll: 404 in Pangandaran, total East Cost Java more than 600.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
REPORT NO. 52: Helps Pangandaran Tsunami Victims
On July 17, 2006, earthquake and tsunami hit south coast of Java, total casualities: more than 500 people. Stichting ONS, Holland and Permata Hati Hospital, Banda Aceh supported Water Treatment Plant Mobile from ITB (Institute Technology of Bandung) to produce clean water for 7,000 people by giving first run operation cost (US$ 1,100) and sending drugs (antibiotics, wound dressing and others) in Pangandaran, West Java, Indonesia.
Clean water distributes to the victims via water tank trucks from local water supply company and others NGO such as Oxfam (Photos: July 18, 2006, Day-2). Thank you for your kind support and sympathy.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Monday, July 17, 2006
Dr. Jo`s Memoirs, Indonesia I feel free to go
Chapter 231
Sunday July 16, 2006
Back to Bandung one more time and
I served Indonesia enough and feel free to go
Dear Pak Jahja and Pak Albert,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honor and privilege to be present at the opening of the Santosa International Hospital, clearly a milestone in Bandung’s health care.
On behalf of the Erasmus Medical Center of the University of Rotterdam of my country and as a representative of Prof. Dr. Hans Jeekel, the Director of International Affairs, I mention the support given so far, the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with both the Hospital and the University of Padjadjaran and our future commitment to help optimizing health care and treatment of your patients, including teaching and research.
The Erasmus University Medical Center includes a Cancer Institute, a Children’s Hospital and top research facilities, judged to be the best in Europe, with fifth place on the world scene, based on the so-called Science Citation Index. The top medical center being Harvard Medical School, with which the Erasmus Medical Center has a Memorandum of Understanding also, thereby providing a link of these most prestigious Health Centers with Bandung.
Professor Jeekel, on previous visits, met with several of the specialists from Bandung and was impressed with their skills and dedication. He believes that a Center of Excellence can be created in close collaboration.
At this point let us not forget that one hundred years ago we lived together in the Golden Age of Medicine, when the subspecialty of Internal Medicine, called Tropical Medicine emerged in Indonesia. When the causes of beri beri, malaria, dengue fever and other tropical diseases became known, yielding a Nobel Prize in Medicine for Christiaan Eijkman.
Today the challenges imposed by infectious diseases impose an even bigger problem with the emergence of viral diseases such as a SARS syndrome and avian influenza. The Institute Pasteur, now BioFarma, established at the end of the 19th Century here in Bandung may still play a bigger role in fighting these and other emerging diseases in the future than it already did in the past, for example in fighting poliomyelitis.
For Pak Jahja whose ethical medicines, vitamins and antibiotics of PT Sanbe Farma are still his main source of income on the basis of which he established Bina San Prima, Sanbio, Infusan and the Santosa Hospital, it may be time to enter the field of vaccines for both human and also animal health care, for prevention of the dreadful diseases caused by viruses, which cannot be cured with antibiotics against bacteria.
Dear Pak Jahja,
Allow me to finish my speech as your now retired first Director of Biotechnology and Research in the years 2001 to 2004, on a more personal note.
Instead of retiring early at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, after having worked for 22 years at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoekhuis and another 12 years at the University in basic cancer research as a medical biologist, I continued my career in Indonesia.
At first as a visiting Professor at the Gadjah Mada Universitas Fakultas Kedokteran from 1998-2001 to start a program of help in the cancer field on behalf of the Koningin Wilhelmina Fonds, The Netherlands Cancer Foundation, The Yayasan Kanker Belanda. It was called the Teach the Teacher program and is funded by one percent of the private funds for cancer in the Netherlands. It has been the basis for dozen of medical dokters to start helping Indonesia
Through the good services of Dr. Demin Shen of the Rajawalli Hospital, your good friend in Bandung and our go-between, you offered me a position to start diagnostic services in your Company. The major accomplishment is SANDIA, a small but state of the art modern diagnostics laboratory in the field of immunohistochemistry and diagnosis of viral diseases such as human papilloma viruses involved in cervical cancer, the major cancer in women today in this country.
My successor in the laboratory is Dr. Sukma Nuswantara, an S3 molecular biologist of Bogor, who lately started real time PCR for further improvement of the diagnosis of viral diseases. Have trust in him, he deserves.
I did not want to leave you, not even after reaching my retirement age, although it is difficult to work with a genius. I fell ill and after 40 years of cancer research I contracted no less than two cancers myself, multiple myeloma and rectal cancer. The first one being diagnosed properly by Dr. Tan, radiologist of the Borromaeus.
Back home in Amsterdam, I was treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, so far successfully. My bone marrow stem cells are stored in case of a recurrence. Thalidomide, also known as softenon, will be used to prevent angiogenesis of metastatic deposits, should they occur.
Thalidomide is specially manufactured again at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, because the pharmaceutical industry stopped production when it was shown that this sleeping pill was harmful for unborn babies. Perhaps a good idea for you to do also?
As a cancer patient now myself I have one last advise for you. Treating cancer is team work. I calculated that no less than 15 different specialists of different medical disciplines were involved in my recovery at one time or another. And all of them have to be at the top of their profession.
Once more treatment of cancer is team work and please make sure radiotherapy will be realized soon, as originally anticipated also for this Hospital, the facilities of which already being designed by Dr Jacob Hoogenhout, retired radiation oncologist of the Katholieke Universiteit van Nijmegen together with Pak Albert, the second genius in this place.
I came back with my last strength to be here. For me it is one of the most emotional moments in my life, for you it may be too. So allow me to finish my talk with a poem which I created for the occasion.
Indonesia I feel free to go
Where the Tangkuban Perahoe looms high over the old lake
Where Paris of the East lies reborn and wide awake
Where the Grand Hotel Preanger still welcomes its guest
Where many bule belanda took their colonial rest
Where a new road links the west and steamy Jakarta
With the Kingdoms of the East and the harbors of Surabaya
There lies Bandung my beloved Shangri-La
In the Sundanese heart of mysterious Java
Globalization with tall ships was a Dutch invention
The ultimate cause of today’s medical convention
Here we are together to serve our people’s legacy
Here at Santosa Hospital we continue our mutual history
Here on the high plateau of eternal spring
I felt like a guru like a scientific king
I served Indonesia enough and I feel free to go
Back to Nederland land of ice and snow
Dear Peter,
Together we traveled back to Indonesia in June 2006 about one month ago now. For me it was almost two years ago since I left the Rumah Sakit Borromaeus of Bandung on a brancard to, in and from the KLM airplane to Amsterdam and the Netherlands Cancer Institute. On my 64th birthday in 2004 I was almost dead and was diagnosed with mutiple myeloma and told to go back to my country if I wanted to be cured. Servaas came to Bandung to pick me up.
Now almost two years later I felt strong enough to travel back to Indonesia together with you.
Well together until Kuala Lumpur, where you were taken off the plane and I could barely hang on. We drank a bit too much whiskey and you shouted something not so nice to one of the stewardesses when she took away the remaining half bottle of three small ones you took into the plane. So you arrived in Jakarta later than I did, on another plane with 250 dollars less, stayed in Jakarta for the night with one of your friends, while I was taken by Sukishno in an old Kijang from Pak Jahja to Bandung, to the Grand Hotel Preanger where I would stay for almost three weeks, indulging in pure luxury and decadence, like a bule Belanda in colonial times.
When love was in the air in the spring
I stayed at Preanger's executive wing
I had come back to the place I belong
Emotions were strong discussions very long
God sent Sri Pryanti to take care of me
He created her beautiful for me to see
She was the angel I waited for
Because I loved in Indonesia before
There was but one duty to fulfill i.e. to deliver a speech for the opening of the Santosa Bandung International Hospital at Kebun Djati near Stasiun Barat of down town Bandung. The speech is at the beginning of this chapter. The beginning of the end of my career and life in Indonesia. It ended appropriately and I felt free to go and most likely will never go back again unless I survive for a few more years my two metastasized cancers, multiple myeloma stage IIIb and adenocarcinoma stage II of the rectum.
An incredible beautiful hospital with a palmtree garden on top next to a helicopter platform. In the middle of decrepid, dirty downtown Bandung. Almost as big a contrast as the Taj Mahal with downtown Agra. A private hospital of 380 beds with eventually a crew of one thousand personnel built for the rich Chinese of Bandung and surroundings, up to Jakarta, in order to keep these patients at home and offer an alternative for a hospital in Singapore. Beautifully build with good taste by apotheker Jahja Santoso, the owner of PT Sanbe Farma.
With a modern laboratory called Sandia, the product of my initiative and imagination as the first Director of Biotech and Research of the Company. My efforts from January 2001 until I left Indonesia on a brancard at the 64th birthday in mid 2004 as mentioned above. With some of my crew still there, such as Dra Daryani, Dr. Sukma Nuswantara and Dr. Bethy Hernovo, to name a few, but most of my original crew of academics out.
You were not interested in attending the opening ceremony. You stayed in Pangandaran with your family and enjoyed your tropical dream and you were right. We the two Dutchmen are no longer needed at Santoso's places. We did our thing and we were not even thanked for it. Life goes on and we are left with the "interest" in the "investment" we made in human relationships. There were still many friends in Bandung for me. Eventually I met with most of them.
Albert Hendarta, the building director of the hospital, invited me at his home for an sunday afternoon around the swimming pool of his house in Pasteur. Diah Singer invited me and some friends also. Ian was regrettably not at home. She prepared a great dinner and played the piano. But she has a heart condition and I am a bit worried and asked Pak Albert to help. She also came to Albert's home with me.
At the Preanger I received most of my friends. Anna, her husband and her little boy Justin. She left Rumah Sakit Santosa desillusioned with the attitude of the Chinese boss, like so many already, the latest being Alin, Albert's most valuable employee over the years who was sacked on the day of the opening. Albert cried. How rude of the ruthless Chinese boss.
I received Kadarsyah, my good and wise friend who was my collaegue at Sanbe all the time and for a full three and a half years. He brought Dr. Marzuki of the Permata Hata Hospital in Banda Atjeh, who cried on my shoulder in the Preanger lobby for a full five minutes. And at the lunch I cried a little bit too. To make a long story short, our tsunami project in Atjeh is a great success and deserves my greatest attention still. I have become sort of a philantropist with a clean and good track record, perhaps to be built on in the future. Together with Pak Jacob.
The old apotheker-king is dead, long live the new dokter-king. From Santoso in Bandung to Marzuki in Banda Atjeh. Towards a new forever lasting friendship between the Atjehnese and the Dutch.
Deasy, my beloved secretary came too, with her baby. And of course Eva Catarina, her child and her husband. Happy memories and lasting friendships. Contacts which will last forever. Daryani, Sukma and Bethy came to see me. Happy meetings without much philosophy because they still work under the Chinese man. They do not look over the horizon, they live with both feet on the ground.
And Theresia Roslanya Pallencaoe, my friend for two years, was still around. More beautiful and still as "bad" as ever. But I stayed in her house with the family, with Ica, Dini and Natashja, for one evening and night. After all they were with me two tumultuous years of my life, one in Yogya and one in Bandung. She came to sing in the restaurant of the Preanger where a Spanisch guitar group of Sumatrans of Lake Toba played to my favourite tunes, such as "I am so young, you are so old..." and "I am your woman..." even "Stranger in the night...." I read my poems for her and tried to dance for the last time with my old stiff bones. Time had stood still for a moment.
Beautiful woman sing me a beautiful song
Awake in this man's mind before long
Images of heaven and much happiness
Make me forget my loneliness
Javanese Princess of my imagination
Naughty woman of my imagination
I come to your heaven before long
If you sing once more my favourite song
The guest relations officers were atttentive, caring, polite, speaking sufficient English and happy with a Dutchman reliving the colonial past in decadence and laziness.
Sri Peryanti, for short Yanti, was my favorite one. I took her and her son Noval and God knows how much additional family to Kiddy Land in the Bandung Super Mall to play games, to eat, to shop and to have a good time together. Together with Pinna and other colleagues they came for dinner with me to The Valley and The Cellar. Happy times were there again. I called her a few days ago and our conversation wa lively.
My farewell party at the Pool Side of the Grand Hotel Preanger was a sea banquet with many of the good ocean fishes, bawal, garoupa, tenggiri, the usual Indonesian banquet of colonial times. With a keyboardist. Singing was done by some of us, especially the Sumatrans who all sing, such as Anna and the husband of Dr. Roos Simanjantuk. I danced one more time, although my left hip gave me much trouble. But I managed. We cried a little bit on eachother's shoulders. "Doctor Jo we all love you". I once more felt like a guru, like a scientific king. I have bridged the gap between "our" two countries, have I not, dear Peter.
Lunch was served at Toko Oen
Rijsttafel we enjoyed at Pesta Keboen
In the spirit of Toean and Njonja
Me together with Michelle and Anna
Semarang city of the tamarind trees
Along the shallow coast of Java's seas
On a sunday afternoon we enjoyed it very much
When again will the Indonesians love the Dutch
We traveled back on KLM via Kuala Lumpur together dear Peter, this time in peace. For me towards a short future in Belanda, but with the East for comparison in my memory, with a little bit of Bahasa Indonesia to show for it and a soon to be published first book in Bandung of thirtysix poems - three of which I mentioned above - under the title Wanita Indonesia. In The Hilgers' way not the Hemingway, my memoirs of close to 1400 pages by now.
Thank you for traveling in life so far with me and for taking such good care of me.
May God be merciful for you and me, so we can still continue for a while "The Music of Life" and realize that "The Selfish Gene" (Dawkins, 1976) does not exist after all. Did not Leonardo da Vinci himself write in his Trattato della Pittura: "Do you not know that our soul is composed of harmony?" (from Denis Noble "The Music of Life. Biology beyond the Genome", Oxford University Press, 2006).
(Doctor) Jo, for the last time?
Sunday July 16, 2006
Back to Bandung one more time and
I served Indonesia enough and feel free to go
Dear Pak Jahja and Pak Albert,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honor and privilege to be present at the opening of the Santosa International Hospital, clearly a milestone in Bandung’s health care.
On behalf of the Erasmus Medical Center of the University of Rotterdam of my country and as a representative of Prof. Dr. Hans Jeekel, the Director of International Affairs, I mention the support given so far, the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with both the Hospital and the University of Padjadjaran and our future commitment to help optimizing health care and treatment of your patients, including teaching and research.
The Erasmus University Medical Center includes a Cancer Institute, a Children’s Hospital and top research facilities, judged to be the best in Europe, with fifth place on the world scene, based on the so-called Science Citation Index. The top medical center being Harvard Medical School, with which the Erasmus Medical Center has a Memorandum of Understanding also, thereby providing a link of these most prestigious Health Centers with Bandung.
Professor Jeekel, on previous visits, met with several of the specialists from Bandung and was impressed with their skills and dedication. He believes that a Center of Excellence can be created in close collaboration.
At this point let us not forget that one hundred years ago we lived together in the Golden Age of Medicine, when the subspecialty of Internal Medicine, called Tropical Medicine emerged in Indonesia. When the causes of beri beri, malaria, dengue fever and other tropical diseases became known, yielding a Nobel Prize in Medicine for Christiaan Eijkman.
Today the challenges imposed by infectious diseases impose an even bigger problem with the emergence of viral diseases such as a SARS syndrome and avian influenza. The Institute Pasteur, now BioFarma, established at the end of the 19th Century here in Bandung may still play a bigger role in fighting these and other emerging diseases in the future than it already did in the past, for example in fighting poliomyelitis.
For Pak Jahja whose ethical medicines, vitamins and antibiotics of PT Sanbe Farma are still his main source of income on the basis of which he established Bina San Prima, Sanbio, Infusan and the Santosa Hospital, it may be time to enter the field of vaccines for both human and also animal health care, for prevention of the dreadful diseases caused by viruses, which cannot be cured with antibiotics against bacteria.
Dear Pak Jahja,
Allow me to finish my speech as your now retired first Director of Biotechnology and Research in the years 2001 to 2004, on a more personal note.
Instead of retiring early at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, after having worked for 22 years at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoekhuis and another 12 years at the University in basic cancer research as a medical biologist, I continued my career in Indonesia.
At first as a visiting Professor at the Gadjah Mada Universitas Fakultas Kedokteran from 1998-2001 to start a program of help in the cancer field on behalf of the Koningin Wilhelmina Fonds, The Netherlands Cancer Foundation, The Yayasan Kanker Belanda. It was called the Teach the Teacher program and is funded by one percent of the private funds for cancer in the Netherlands. It has been the basis for dozen of medical dokters to start helping Indonesia
Through the good services of Dr. Demin Shen of the Rajawalli Hospital, your good friend in Bandung and our go-between, you offered me a position to start diagnostic services in your Company. The major accomplishment is SANDIA, a small but state of the art modern diagnostics laboratory in the field of immunohistochemistry and diagnosis of viral diseases such as human papilloma viruses involved in cervical cancer, the major cancer in women today in this country.
My successor in the laboratory is Dr. Sukma Nuswantara, an S3 molecular biologist of Bogor, who lately started real time PCR for further improvement of the diagnosis of viral diseases. Have trust in him, he deserves.
I did not want to leave you, not even after reaching my retirement age, although it is difficult to work with a genius. I fell ill and after 40 years of cancer research I contracted no less than two cancers myself, multiple myeloma and rectal cancer. The first one being diagnosed properly by Dr. Tan, radiologist of the Borromaeus.
Back home in Amsterdam, I was treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, so far successfully. My bone marrow stem cells are stored in case of a recurrence. Thalidomide, also known as softenon, will be used to prevent angiogenesis of metastatic deposits, should they occur.
Thalidomide is specially manufactured again at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, because the pharmaceutical industry stopped production when it was shown that this sleeping pill was harmful for unborn babies. Perhaps a good idea for you to do also?
As a cancer patient now myself I have one last advise for you. Treating cancer is team work. I calculated that no less than 15 different specialists of different medical disciplines were involved in my recovery at one time or another. And all of them have to be at the top of their profession.
Once more treatment of cancer is team work and please make sure radiotherapy will be realized soon, as originally anticipated also for this Hospital, the facilities of which already being designed by Dr Jacob Hoogenhout, retired radiation oncologist of the Katholieke Universiteit van Nijmegen together with Pak Albert, the second genius in this place.
I came back with my last strength to be here. For me it is one of the most emotional moments in my life, for you it may be too. So allow me to finish my talk with a poem which I created for the occasion.
Indonesia I feel free to go
Where the Tangkuban Perahoe looms high over the old lake
Where Paris of the East lies reborn and wide awake
Where the Grand Hotel Preanger still welcomes its guest
Where many bule belanda took their colonial rest
Where a new road links the west and steamy Jakarta
With the Kingdoms of the East and the harbors of Surabaya
There lies Bandung my beloved Shangri-La
In the Sundanese heart of mysterious Java
Globalization with tall ships was a Dutch invention
The ultimate cause of today’s medical convention
Here we are together to serve our people’s legacy
Here at Santosa Hospital we continue our mutual history
Here on the high plateau of eternal spring
I felt like a guru like a scientific king
I served Indonesia enough and I feel free to go
Back to Nederland land of ice and snow
Dear Peter,
Together we traveled back to Indonesia in June 2006 about one month ago now. For me it was almost two years ago since I left the Rumah Sakit Borromaeus of Bandung on a brancard to, in and from the KLM airplane to Amsterdam and the Netherlands Cancer Institute. On my 64th birthday in 2004 I was almost dead and was diagnosed with mutiple myeloma and told to go back to my country if I wanted to be cured. Servaas came to Bandung to pick me up.
Now almost two years later I felt strong enough to travel back to Indonesia together with you.
Well together until Kuala Lumpur, where you were taken off the plane and I could barely hang on. We drank a bit too much whiskey and you shouted something not so nice to one of the stewardesses when she took away the remaining half bottle of three small ones you took into the plane. So you arrived in Jakarta later than I did, on another plane with 250 dollars less, stayed in Jakarta for the night with one of your friends, while I was taken by Sukishno in an old Kijang from Pak Jahja to Bandung, to the Grand Hotel Preanger where I would stay for almost three weeks, indulging in pure luxury and decadence, like a bule Belanda in colonial times.
When love was in the air in the spring
I stayed at Preanger's executive wing
I had come back to the place I belong
Emotions were strong discussions very long
God sent Sri Pryanti to take care of me
He created her beautiful for me to see
She was the angel I waited for
Because I loved in Indonesia before
There was but one duty to fulfill i.e. to deliver a speech for the opening of the Santosa Bandung International Hospital at Kebun Djati near Stasiun Barat of down town Bandung. The speech is at the beginning of this chapter. The beginning of the end of my career and life in Indonesia. It ended appropriately and I felt free to go and most likely will never go back again unless I survive for a few more years my two metastasized cancers, multiple myeloma stage IIIb and adenocarcinoma stage II of the rectum.
An incredible beautiful hospital with a palmtree garden on top next to a helicopter platform. In the middle of decrepid, dirty downtown Bandung. Almost as big a contrast as the Taj Mahal with downtown Agra. A private hospital of 380 beds with eventually a crew of one thousand personnel built for the rich Chinese of Bandung and surroundings, up to Jakarta, in order to keep these patients at home and offer an alternative for a hospital in Singapore. Beautifully build with good taste by apotheker Jahja Santoso, the owner of PT Sanbe Farma.
With a modern laboratory called Sandia, the product of my initiative and imagination as the first Director of Biotech and Research of the Company. My efforts from January 2001 until I left Indonesia on a brancard at the 64th birthday in mid 2004 as mentioned above. With some of my crew still there, such as Dra Daryani, Dr. Sukma Nuswantara and Dr. Bethy Hernovo, to name a few, but most of my original crew of academics out.
You were not interested in attending the opening ceremony. You stayed in Pangandaran with your family and enjoyed your tropical dream and you were right. We the two Dutchmen are no longer needed at Santoso's places. We did our thing and we were not even thanked for it. Life goes on and we are left with the "interest" in the "investment" we made in human relationships. There were still many friends in Bandung for me. Eventually I met with most of them.
Albert Hendarta, the building director of the hospital, invited me at his home for an sunday afternoon around the swimming pool of his house in Pasteur. Diah Singer invited me and some friends also. Ian was regrettably not at home. She prepared a great dinner and played the piano. But she has a heart condition and I am a bit worried and asked Pak Albert to help. She also came to Albert's home with me.
At the Preanger I received most of my friends. Anna, her husband and her little boy Justin. She left Rumah Sakit Santosa desillusioned with the attitude of the Chinese boss, like so many already, the latest being Alin, Albert's most valuable employee over the years who was sacked on the day of the opening. Albert cried. How rude of the ruthless Chinese boss.
I received Kadarsyah, my good and wise friend who was my collaegue at Sanbe all the time and for a full three and a half years. He brought Dr. Marzuki of the Permata Hata Hospital in Banda Atjeh, who cried on my shoulder in the Preanger lobby for a full five minutes. And at the lunch I cried a little bit too. To make a long story short, our tsunami project in Atjeh is a great success and deserves my greatest attention still. I have become sort of a philantropist with a clean and good track record, perhaps to be built on in the future. Together with Pak Jacob.
The old apotheker-king is dead, long live the new dokter-king. From Santoso in Bandung to Marzuki in Banda Atjeh. Towards a new forever lasting friendship between the Atjehnese and the Dutch.
Deasy, my beloved secretary came too, with her baby. And of course Eva Catarina, her child and her husband. Happy memories and lasting friendships. Contacts which will last forever. Daryani, Sukma and Bethy came to see me. Happy meetings without much philosophy because they still work under the Chinese man. They do not look over the horizon, they live with both feet on the ground.
And Theresia Roslanya Pallencaoe, my friend for two years, was still around. More beautiful and still as "bad" as ever. But I stayed in her house with the family, with Ica, Dini and Natashja, for one evening and night. After all they were with me two tumultuous years of my life, one in Yogya and one in Bandung. She came to sing in the restaurant of the Preanger where a Spanisch guitar group of Sumatrans of Lake Toba played to my favourite tunes, such as "I am so young, you are so old..." and "I am your woman..." even "Stranger in the night...." I read my poems for her and tried to dance for the last time with my old stiff bones. Time had stood still for a moment.
Beautiful woman sing me a beautiful song
Awake in this man's mind before long
Images of heaven and much happiness
Make me forget my loneliness
Javanese Princess of my imagination
Naughty woman of my imagination
I come to your heaven before long
If you sing once more my favourite song
The guest relations officers were atttentive, caring, polite, speaking sufficient English and happy with a Dutchman reliving the colonial past in decadence and laziness.
Sri Peryanti, for short Yanti, was my favorite one. I took her and her son Noval and God knows how much additional family to Kiddy Land in the Bandung Super Mall to play games, to eat, to shop and to have a good time together. Together with Pinna and other colleagues they came for dinner with me to The Valley and The Cellar. Happy times were there again. I called her a few days ago and our conversation wa lively.
My farewell party at the Pool Side of the Grand Hotel Preanger was a sea banquet with many of the good ocean fishes, bawal, garoupa, tenggiri, the usual Indonesian banquet of colonial times. With a keyboardist. Singing was done by some of us, especially the Sumatrans who all sing, such as Anna and the husband of Dr. Roos Simanjantuk. I danced one more time, although my left hip gave me much trouble. But I managed. We cried a little bit on eachother's shoulders. "Doctor Jo we all love you". I once more felt like a guru, like a scientific king. I have bridged the gap between "our" two countries, have I not, dear Peter.
Lunch was served at Toko Oen
Rijsttafel we enjoyed at Pesta Keboen
In the spirit of Toean and Njonja
Me together with Michelle and Anna
Semarang city of the tamarind trees
Along the shallow coast of Java's seas
On a sunday afternoon we enjoyed it very much
When again will the Indonesians love the Dutch
We traveled back on KLM via Kuala Lumpur together dear Peter, this time in peace. For me towards a short future in Belanda, but with the East for comparison in my memory, with a little bit of Bahasa Indonesia to show for it and a soon to be published first book in Bandung of thirtysix poems - three of which I mentioned above - under the title Wanita Indonesia. In The Hilgers' way not the Hemingway, my memoirs of close to 1400 pages by now.
Thank you for traveling in life so far with me and for taking such good care of me.
May God be merciful for you and me, so we can still continue for a while "The Music of Life" and realize that "The Selfish Gene" (Dawkins, 1976) does not exist after all. Did not Leonardo da Vinci himself write in his Trattato della Pittura: "Do you not know that our soul is composed of harmony?" (from Denis Noble "The Music of Life. Biology beyond the Genome", Oxford University Press, 2006).
(Doctor) Jo, for the last time?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
MIRACLE OF LOVE
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your support to the reconstruction of Permata Hati Hospital, Banda Aceh. After 18 months of our effort, I documented the process chronologically and made a CD presentation (in powerpoint format), consists of 150 frames from Day 1 (26 December 2004) till 26 June 2006.
This is truly a miracle of love, you and many people from all over the world share your sympathy and help Aceh people.
If you need the CD for your collection, please inform me and give your postal address. I will send it to you by airmail.
With warm regards,
Kadar
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