pre-wedding session di parangtritis yogyakarta, taken by kenvin pinardy

22 may 2009: wedding reception

wearing yogyakarta's kanigaran (kebesaran) clothes, similar with those worn by sultan hamengku buwono for crowning ceremony in the palace. black was the only original color for this, beautiful! as if we're the real king and queen ;)

before the long march being started

with paes ageng make-up which was rich in yogyakarta philosophical meaning and dressed in kanigaran, i never looked beautiful than before... teehee! :D

watching the srimpi dance while sitting on the marvelous stage in joglo-style

the new happy family

pre-wed session taken in keraton ratu boko, yogyakarta, by kenvin pinardy

22 may 2009:
1. akad nikah

the groom came to my house

me--as the bride, of course--came to witness the ijab kabul process between my dad and him

ijab kabul process between my beloved two men

praying and signing the marriage papers afterwards

my husband--finally, yeay!!--giving me the mas kawin or wedding gifts

2. panggih

3. tampa kaya / kacar-kucur

notice in the right side that we--the groom and bride--came in to the house by ourselves, accompanied by the bride's parents behind. in yogyakarta they don't do 'sinduran' as in surakarta's

4. bubak kawah & tumplak punjen

the happiest newlywed ;)

my fave pre-wed pic, taken in tamansari yogyakarta by kenvin pinardy

21 may 2009:
1. the prayers (for me and him)

the prayers in my house

asking for apologize, permission, and blessing from my parents

the prayers in his house

asking for apologize, permission, and blessing from his parents

his family :)

2. bleketepe hanging and assembling the tuwuhan (for me)

3. pelangkahan (for him)

him and his brother on pelangkahan

4. siraman (for me and him)

me, before siraman

my siraman process

my mom selling dawet on the right

his siraman process

5. midodareni (for me & him)

my prince has come... :)

tantingan by my parents

my dad reads the catur wedha for him

a glass of water; the only thing he could consume on midodareni

my mom giving the angsul-angsul to his mom

*40 years' worth of thanks In 1968, a white firefighter saved a black baby girl, touching the heart of a divided city. The two did not meet again. Until yesterday.

The firefighter crawled on his stomach through the pitch-black apartment, the smoke so thick he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Somewhere inside was a baby and he had to find her.

A window broke, light filled the room, and he saw her lying in her crib, dressed only in a diaper, unconscious. Soot covered her tiny nose. She wasn't breathing and had no pulse.

He grabbed her and breathed life into her as he ran from the apartment.

A newspaper photograph captured their image - a white firefighter from South Boston with his lips pressed to the mouth of a black baby from the Roxbury public housing development - at a time when riots sparked by racial tensions were burning down American cities.

But despite this most intimate of introductions, they remained strangers. William Carroll won a commendation for the rescue, stayed on the job another 34 years, and retired. Evangeline Harper grew up, lost her family to drugs and illness, had six children of her own, and became a nursing and teaching assistant. And through it all someone would often tell her the story about the day she almost died and the man who would not let it happen. She always wanted to meet him and say thank you.

Yesterday, more than 40 years after the fire, she finally did.

In the neighborhood where they first met, Carroll, a slim 71-year-old, got out of his car, dressed in a navy blue uniform he had borrowed from a fellow firefighter, strode up to the 40-year-old woman, and beamed.

"You've grown a lot since the last time I saw you," he said, laughing and putting out his hand. She smiled, gently took his hand, and looked at him almost shyly.

"Thank you so much for remembering me," he told her.

Then he pulled her into a tight embrace and they held on to each other as they stood on Keegan Street, just a few yards from where he had carried her limp body decades ago.

"Thank you so much," she said softly.

The Globe arranged the meeting after Evangeline Harper, now Evangeline Anderson, introduced herself to a reporter at a community meeting and asked for help tracking down Carroll.

Anderson, who now lives in Dorchester, had tried twice before to locate the firefighter, first when she was 18, after her adoptive mother told her about the rescue, and again right after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

She tried to get his address from the Fire Department, but they said they could not give out personal information. She left her name and phone number, but never heard back.

"I thought, 'Oh, forget it. He probably doesn't remember," she said. " 'He's not interested.' "

That could not have been further from the truth.

"Evangeline Harper," Carroll said. "I'll never forget her name if I live to be 100 years old."

He heard once that she had been trying to get in touch with him, but somehow her phone number was lost and he did not know how to reach her.

For a while, Anderson stopped looking. Then, she heard the news about Lieutenant Kevin M. Kelley, the firefighter who was killed in January after his firetruck crashed into a Mission Hill building.

" 'Oh my God, this could have been this gentleman, and I never got a chance to say thank you,' " she recalled thinking. "I didn't want him to leave this earth or I to leave this earth without saying thank you."

Yesterday, she brought her youngest child, 6-year-old Reginald, and her godmother, Jacqueline Greer, who witnessed the rescue. For the meeting, Anderson swept her hair in a curly updo and carefully applied lip gloss.

The women brought Carroll a giant stuffed bear, and a thank-you card tucked inside an envelope addressed "To Our Hero."

Richard Paris, vice president of the firefighters union, stood nearby with Carroll's wife and little Reginald, who kicked at the frozen snow on the sidewalk as Greer, Carroll, and Anderson reminisced about the neighborhood. Gone were the brick high-rises that had once formed Orchard Park. In their place were two-level attached apartments painted in pastels and browns.

"I haven't been here in so long," Carroll said.

No one could remember exactly what started the fire on Nov. 7, 1968, but Greer said it began in the family's kitchen. Carroll, who was assigned to Engine 3, heard the report of children trapped in a burning building.

When Carroll arrived, Greer was at the scene, screaming and crying hysterically.

Carroll saved Evangeline, while Firefighter Charles Connolly rescued her 17-month-old brother, Gerry, and handed him to Lieutenant Joseph O'Donnell, who gave the boy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"He just cared," Greer, now 60, said of Carroll. "It wasn't that the child was black or she was white. It was a child and he was trying his best to bring her back her life."

Yesterday, both remembered who was missing from the reunion. Connolly and O'Donnell died long ago of heart problems. Anderson's brother Gerry succumbed to pneumonia as a toddler. Her grief-stricken mother turned to drugs for comfort, and died of an overdose at age 25. Her two sisters died young of natural causes. Last year, Anderson lost both her adoptive mother and uncle.

"I wish my friends . . . were here," Carroll said. "But they're up there watching over us."

"That's what I say about my family," Anderson said.

The two quickly built a rapport. He asked about her children, and she told him her eldest son was studying forensic science in college and how musical her other children are.

He told her he wanted to get to know her, and she promised to cook him some soul food.

"Oh, baby," he said, laughing. "I love it, but my stomach don't."

Carroll then took the group for lunch at Florian Hall, the union's headquarters, where Carroll still goes every week for coffee with friends or to help fellow retirees with healthcare questions. Over sandwiches, the group looked at old black-and-white photos of that day and traded stories about the challenges of raising children.

Carroll bonded with Anderson's son, who drew a picture of himself holding Carroll's hand.

Parting in the parking lot, Carroll hugged Greer and Anderson and told Reginald to call him.

"There's your new grandpa," Anderson said to her son.

"What a beautiful day," the retired firefighter said as he turned and walked back inside.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

i've to admit that i'm tired. tired to be in the same city for almost 6 years. tired to study all the things that i'm not interested in (at first). tired to attend every course in the end of the road.

but, hey, on 05022009, that piece of paper in the hardcover frame do put a neverending smile on my face. a smile of a medical doctor, officially ;)

when will i wear it again?

*i'll miss being a coassisstant...

it's on the 2nd week of april 2007, if i'm not mistaken, when i came anxiously to the sardjito hospital as a new coassisstant for the first time. my thought was strangled with many kind of questions; will i able to pass this phase? will i do something wrong? will i accidentally messed up? will my patients be okay? will i get along with my new friends in the  group? will they accept me? will i be an individual or not? will everything be alright?? ...and at that  time, i was too afraid to answer all of those questions.

internal medicine was my first rotation, and as far as i can remember i've never been so diligent as when i was in this department; in my first week, when i was still a newbie knowing nothing and seemed to be lost in the middle of nowhere, i was assigned to assist a resident with the most patient counts in the ward, always more than 10 patients, and i'm alone! whereas some of my friends are lucky enough to be paired with fewer patient than mine!! T.T so there i am, the newbie, anxiously wake up every 4am--yeah, believe me, i was extremely too diligent at that time--to take bath, skipping breakfast, and drive away to the hospital, arrived at around 5.15am-5.30am carrying a heavy daily bag filled with some notes and internal med books, a hand-carry bag of a standard mercury sphygmomanometer, and not forgetting a small pink sling bag filled with a penlight, both digital and mercury thermometers, and a measuring tape. stethoscope? hanging on my neck ^^ i'm such an over-excited newbie anyway, apart that somehow i kinda want to be an internist someday regarding my mom's hidden illness that can't be cured up to this second, actually i really like studying internal meds. it's fascinating, in short. and still it is to me til now...

then the rotation went on and on... public health medicine and ear-nose-throat came shortly, followed by primary health care, dermatovenerology and psychiatry. together with 3 nurse coassisstants, we're spending 6 weeks in a primary health care in an outskirt-area of jogja. it was such a twilight for me, for being happy and unhappy. happy to face the patients as a "temporary real" doctor, and unhappy to know the reality of this country's medical facilities... like using some kind of drugs that actually had been banned? and a poor child with thalassemia who lived in such an unproper house and unable to afford any medications. i just can't help my tears from falling... T.T back then in my final year of undergrad, i did my thesis in dermatovenereology department, it's about keloid, a supposedly-to-be-simple biomolecular experiment using ultraviolet light, but i ended up in more than 12 months to finished it. frustrating, i've to confess, but that was the first time i found out that dermatovenereology attracts me. well... not until i get into the real rotation. some pros and cons happened in me when i was in the real set, and, yes, it disappoints me... and psychiatry?? nothing special, for the clinical part itself, but in the other part, the so-called-newly-formed-friendship had just getting stronger and better; as if our life were stopped around restaurants to eat and any comfortable desks to play poker--and, hey, i once played poker while i'm driving to a satellite hospital, y'know?? hahaha--plus a special thing for me to reminisce and again for my long-lasting i-know-it-and-i-can-do-it attitude: i drive myself and 3 friends to banyumas and back home, without changing driver. ooh i just love how it feels!

then obsgyn came, a nightmare for coassisstants that have been a legend for decades. and it happens to me. spending my 2 weeks out of total 8 weeks of the rotation in klaten, i lost my weight from 46 to 43-44 kgs. and for the first time of my life, me, who always been a food-eater and awarded by my dad as a "small-motorized-vehicle-with-double-decker-bus-capacity", or in indonesian language: "bemo muatan bis tingkat"--yeah, i eat more than you thought if you saw my figure ;p--but at that time, i craved for sleep more than for eat!! apart that i always amaze witnessing every second of the laboring process, it was a real tiring rotation. so no, i don't wanna be an obsgyn. no-uh.

having surgery rotation after obsgyn was such a heaven. thank God, i'm lucky enough for being created as female, regarding those 95% of surgery residents were male--if you got what i mean ;)--and having a killer urologist as my examiner was not a real problem, at all ;) ;) ;)

pediatric was supposedly another nightmare besides obsgyn, but spending 4 weeks in klaten was a real fun, and definitely not a nightmare like obsgyn. the pediatricians are nice and kind, especially our tutor, like i wrote before in here. i never know how it feels to have a grandfather, and i really want him as mine if i could :)

ophthalmology and neurology were another "heavenly" rotations. but not with anesthesiology after that. it was horrible horrible horrible. and waaaaay more tiring than obsgyn, well... imagine that, just like i wrote here. but radiology and forensic became such a happily-ever-after ending for my clinical rotation. it was fun, it wasn't tiring at all, and together with my sisterhood and brotherhood of kero gang--beware of it!--and culinary team, i've finished that 20-months-most-important-phase-of-my-life. i'll miss the hospital. i'll miss the patients. i'll miss all the rush happens. i'll miss all the troubles. i'll miss the night duty. i'll miss the canteens. i'll miss the smell of the public ward. i'll miss the freezing operating room. i'll miss the green and blue uniform. i'll miss the bedside study. i'll miss being "disappear" between working hours.

i'll miss being a coassisstant.

i really will.