For this year’s Christmas Tree, we decided a little bit of “lights on the ground” effect. Actually, that’s because we have some dangling Christmas lights that we didn’t know where to put, so we figured that it’ll look cool as if it falls from the tree itself. Mom also decided that we use the colors just like the ones we did for GKI Pondok Indah this year. Well, when it gets to Christmas decorations, you just gotta hand it over to Mom, she knows best.

Mom and I are hoping that the house renovation will be done by this week. By that time, we will have a new glass-wall, with water pouring down on it, with a quite large fish pond in front of it. And what I like about it, is that the waterfall wall will be located in front of my studio. I can’t wait to get that “breezy” feeling with flowing water. I always loved it.

My family have done several renovating jobs on the house for the past 22 years. The first one was done when I think I was in kindergarten. That is when we extended the master bedroom to have a small working studio for Mom and Dad.

The second one would be when we added a second garage on the backyard, when I was in elementary. The third one would be when we expanded the master bedroom (again), and move its bathroom to the other side of the room.

The third one was when we extended the second storey to hold a larger room, and a rehearsal room, the one the ensemble uses for the practice every week. We also added the server room for the house’s LAN system. Oh, BTW, the renovator did a quite crappy job with this one. Paintjobs are chipping off the walls, cracks and dents are also showing up as the time goes by.

The current renovation is an attempt to correct the flaws of the third renovation. We are trying badly to ditch the slightly-Victorian styling in our house, the pillars, the edges of the ceiling, and everything. So hopefully, with that new waterfall glass, a new indoor garden, and several other minor renovations, we would get a nice modern style for our house.

Several days ago, Dad bought a set of 3 Alsynite Spinaway MkII ventilation system to be placed on top of our house’s roof. The purpose, to dissipate heat trapped between the roof and the ceiling, by pulling them up, and moving it out of the gap, thus creating a cooler room under the ceiling.

So the guys from the distributor came by today, supposedly to install those three vents. However, they seem to work so unefficiently that Dad decided to cancel the installation after they get the first one working. Pak Poyo (our new constructor for the house renovation), told us that they are working really slow. And I bet, he can install those vents even faster than those guys. So the next vents will probably be installed tomorrow, or after Pak Poyo is done with the house’s paint job.

The weird thing is, Kara’s Dad also installed two vents like those in their house. But she said, it felt almost no different. Hmmm… I really hope the vents work, because living in Jakarta, we have to battle the extensive heat almost everyday.