update: link to the Cirebon gallery added

I have been lucky enough to be part of this.

I was born in the city of Cirebon, one of the pop­u­lar place that pro­duces batik, and with its own style, its Mega-mendung sig­na­ture pat­tern is well known through­out the coun­try, even the region as one of the most unique cre­ation of Batik pat­terns. I’ve writ­ten about it in the Jakarta Post ear­lier this year and I have also since revis­ited for a planned fol­lowup fea­ture that is yet to see the light.

Featured here are some pho­tographs on how batik is made. it was meant to become a com­pan­ion gallery to the Post’s arti­cle but they refuse to link them, you may read the orig­i­nal arti­cle online here.

You may also see what Cirebon is like here.

On a sec­ondary note, a heart-wracking inci­dent occurred a few days prior to the offi­cial announce­ment, at about 5:00 pm, September 30^th, a mag­ni­tude 7.6 earth­quake struck just off­shore of the town of Padang in Sumatra, a neigh­bor­ing island of Java, and later another one struck in Jambi with sim­i­lar impact. Many have pledge their sup­port to help, includ­ing President Obama of the USA:

Indonesia is an extra­or­di­nary coun­try that’s known extra­or­di­nary hard­ship from nat­ural dis­as­ters. I know first­hand that the Indonesian peo­ple are strong and resilient and have the spirit to over­come this enor­mous challenge.

There are many ways to sup­port, but the eas­i­est one I found is through Oxfam’s East-Asia Disasters Appeal. Act now and let’s start car­ing for mother nature, we only have one.