Visit to Jokja

Visit to Jokja (Djokjakarta)

At 6 o’clock Sunday morning I visited the market on the main road of Salatiga, close to our Hotel “Le Beringin”. At that time the market is already open during 3 hours. Most people sit on the ground waiting until 7 o’clock when the inside market will open. Many people sold tempe packed in either leaves or plastic. They didn’t sell “ragi”, the starting culture for tempe fermentation.

Early market in a street of Salatiga. The woman (left) sells lombok,
the boy (right) taugé.

Walking back through the noise of hundred motorbikes I heard nearby the beautiful song of an Oriole. It took me some time to find the caged bird in a closed shop behind an open window.

Main street of Salatiga; at right the entrance to our hotel.
Right: a caged bird singing like an Oriole.

After breakfast Lusi, Santoso and Alvin came in a big car driven by Utomo to bring us to Jokja. Near the town we visited an old sugar factory, Gondang Baru, that had been closed down in June. Although it didn’t seem possible we were told that the factory would be running again next year.

Pictures of the sugar factory Gondang Baru, taken by Ed Aschermann.

Next we visited a village were they made ceramics and sculptures of wood and stone. In one of the gardens we saw a beautiful Rambutan tree; what a pity that these delicious fruits were not yet ripe…. We didn’t reach Jokja-center and drove back through a heavy rain via Magelang.

Throwing large pots with clay found nearby.
Right: Primitive wood firing in a one-man pot factory.

Rambutan tree with ripening fruits.
Rain on our way to Magelang.

Graduation 24th and 25th October
Saturday morning Lusi comes to fetch me; she brings delicious snacks for breakfast. In the lab Yanti and Fenny make again preparations of fresh tempe. We still have to develop a procedure for cutting small and representative samples from the tempe blocs; the staining and microscopy part seems to be easier. Fenny is a great help in operating the HP. To our surprise we do not find much mycelium; instead a lot of large cells apparently derived from plant tissue (see photograph).

Pictures of tempe taken with the Axiostar fluorescence microscope.
Left: UV excitation of tempe-sample stained with DAPI and propidium iodide. The thin threads of the mold (Rhizopus?) seem dead.
Right: Blue light excitation with a X-filter. The green cells with red nuclei are probably plant cells.

About 25 students will get their bachelor degree (“Sarjana” and “Para-sarjana”; para=many) from the “Fakultas Sains dan Matematika`’. After a prayer and some talks the students come forward in white jackets and receive a trophy out of the hands of Lusi. There is live music, again a prayer and then an informal lunch. I talk with a student from East-Timor who will become a teacher. He speaks indonesian and hardly portugeese; but that is going to be changed now that they are independent!
In contrast to nearby towns like Semarang and Solo, Salatiga has a Christian majority of 60%, most of them catholic. In the whole of Indonesia the percentage of Christians is about 10%.

Lusi, as dean of the faculty, speaks to the students and their parents. After the formal session and a lunch, students come to Lusi to thank her for the education.

On Saturday the official graduation ceremony takes place which occurs three times a year. This time 530 students will graduate. The female students have to go to a hairdresser already at 5 o’clock in the morning! Their dress will cost them another $20!

The official graduation. Left: The members of the Senate are in beautiful dresses. In the middle are standing Kris Timotius, Rector of the University, and Lusi Dewi, Dean of the Fakultas Sains dan Matematika. Right: All students look beautiful!

We are fetched from our Hotel Le Beringin by a University car and guided through the crowd of students and parents to seats in the front for V.I.P. The speeches, a prayer and the naming of all stuidents is accompanied by gamelan music. The rector, Kris Timotius, moves the tassle at the left side to the right side of the graduation cap of all the 530 students that pass him. This solemn act of confirmation is performed in all Universities of Indonesia.
In his speech Kris Timotius mentions the dutchmen from Amsterdam at the VIP table and asks us to stand up, thanking us for bringing the micrsocope. After the ceremony we were invited to have lunch with the senate.

Jeffy&Ed Aschermann and Lidie as VIP’s at the graduation ceremony.

22 October: Tempe samples

On our trip around Rawah Paning, the lake near Salatiga, we were surprised by a heavy rain storm! (21 October 2008)

22 October. Tempe: fresh and spoiled

With Lusi and Kris we discuss possibilities for a project and a grant application. A technician brings two packages of tempe packed in banana leaves: fresh and rotten. The rotten, brown-colored tempe has a terrible smell. Only now I realize that all the fresh tempe is produced the previous day from soybeans that are imported from the US. Local farmers cannot make profit with growing soybeans.

Two packages of tempe: fresh and rotten.
Sudaryanti (technician), Fenny (biology student) and Lusi, making preparations in the lab.

In the lab we try to make preparations of the two samples. We have to vortex, to centrifuge and to dilute the fluorescence stains. Now I realize how spoiled we are in our dutch laboratory with all the modern equipment. We only succeed in photographing Rhizopus-spores and yeast cells from the starter culture given by Rob Samson of CBS (Fungal Biodiversity Center, Utrecht).

21 October 2008 Microscope in Salatiga

The first picture in Salatiga

On Monday morning, 20th October 2008, Lusi Dewi came with her husband Santoso to Hotel Metro in Semarang. After eight years we saw each other again! We made a detour to the beach with very rich houses but no birds, we ate delicious fish in a big restaurant and visited the coffee plantation Banaran in Bawen (“Kampoeng Kopi”). From there we could see Salatiga beneath us on the plane.

View on Salatiga (left) with the gunung (mountain) Marbabu and the lake Rawa Paning

The next day, October 21, Ed and I went to Lusi’s office together with computer, camera, agar plates, cells and fluorochromes. After drinking coffee with the rector of the University, Kris Timotius, Lusi and Agus Kristijanto, we went down to the room where the microscope had been waiting for almost a year. It took me a full hour to assemble the microscope; but then Lusi could take the first picture!

It took a full hour to assemble the fluorescence microscope.
With Kris Timotius and Lusi Dewi: the first picture

Ed, Kris and Lusi at the microscope

Microscope for Salatiga

Marco Angelini and Thomas Beller in Milan - The Axiostar + Camera

To all those friends who contributed to the “Microscope for Salatiga”,

Remember that I wanted to bring a fluorescence microscope to Salatiga after my retirement in 2005?

The idea arose in 2000, when I visited my former student, Lusi Dewi, in Salatiga.

The microscope itself (a Zeiss Axiostar) was sponsored by Marco Angelini, director of Fraen Company (Milan, It), who developed the LED fluorescence illuminator for it. Thanks to you all I could purchase a Canon Powershot camera (plus adapters). The laptop computer for camera control and archivation of images was sponsored by Ed and Jeffy Aschermann.

We fetched the microscope in Milan on October 9, 2006. Marco Angelini and Thomas Beller were very helpful in demonstrating the LED-illumination. After testing the microscope in Amsterdam and comparing it with our own fluorescence microscope, we sent it off by DHL. In December 2007 the ~25 kg package arrived in Salatiga.

Special thanks go to Erik Manders (contact with Fraen Comp.), Chris Diekhuis (visit to Milan), Ellen Lutz (transport), Joachim Goedhart (fluorochromes and preparations), Norbert Vischer (ImageJ installation), Peter Zoon (Computer programs) and Frits van Beckum (contacts with prof. Kris Timotius of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana).

Ed Aschermann: testing the laptop in Amsterdam - Pictures of Rhizopus oligosporus

Indonesian connection

Jeffy is an “anak Surabaya”, just as I am an “anak Batavi”, child born in Batavia. Jeffy was born in Surabaya 0n 29 January 1947. Her father (in the dutch army) and her mother (working for the Red Cross) met on the boat Orontes that brought them to Sydney, where they married on the 10 September 1945 (just after the Japaneese capitulation). Her father was assigned a post on the island of Sumbawa, where he accepted the (late) capitulation of the Japanese contingent.
Having studied Indonesian law at Leiden University, he became “Assistent Resident” of Surabaya until 1948, when Indonesia became independent. He then became law teacher at the University of Surabaya, but had to leave the country as one of the last dutchmen in 1958. Jeffy still speaks “bahassa indonesia”.

Departure at Schiphol: Ed, Lidie, Conrad, Jeffy

Search for my father’s house of birth in Semarang

My father, Oscar Woldringh, was born in Semarang on 15 December 1904. He left a picture of the house where he was born, without address.

Upon arrival in Semarang (on 18 October 2008) we walked from our hotel (Metro Hotel) to Toko Oen. There we met a french businessman who advised us to go to the former hotel Bellevue, now Hotel Candi Baru (= New Tjandi), where many old people lived who might recognize the picture of the house. In the restaurant of the hotel we met Sandra and Sigit, who thought to know the house. Sigit brought us to a beautiful, renovated building (Jl. Kyai Saleh #12-14) which was now a school. Inside it looked as a palace and we couldn’t believe that this was the first house of my grandfather, who had just married an english girl, Zilla Warren, in Surabaya (Her father, Arthur Warren, had been Vice-Consul of Surabaya).

The next day, October 19, we visited Mevrouw Wiriasudirja, the grandmother of Aileen A., student at AMOLF in Amsterdam. Her grandma used to make tempe, taoco and banana-wine (from fermented sugar-containing banana’s). She spoke beautiful dutch, but could not remember anymore her recipe. Aileen’s father, Ir. Paul Brotoseno, who came with sister Myra, also recognized the house….. He brought us in his car to the same address! Again we wondered how a young dutch couple could have lived in such a big house.

After this second visit to the house, Paul and Myra brought us to a small Chineese Temple, then to the huge office of a dutch train company (Bataafse Spoorweg Mij), to a fantastic shop/restaurant, where we ate and bought many Indonesian snacks, and finally to a huge, new Chineese Temple complex.

Old and new: could this be the house?