News and Such
Hey everyone…I know this blog looks really funny right now, but that is because I am making some drastic changes. I am changing the look, feel and even the content. I don’t know how long it will take, but let’s face it, it’s been more than a year since my last blog, so this is an improvement.
Come back soon!
Jenn
Hi everyone! Wanted to mention that my webpage went through a dramatic transformation this weekend.
One of my favorite things to do is designing and coding webpages, but regretfully I let mine sit on the back burner.
I noticed that in recent weeks my webpage has seen an uptick in activity (mostly because Anita has posted some very interesting blogs that garner lots of attention, then linked back to me). I realized rather quickly that I should update my page to better demonstrate my web design abilities, so my new page was born! Enjoy!
Here it is! (<———click)
Anita and I have been together for 12 years. During that time there has been quite a few discussions regarding our names. Since we can’t legally get married, should we keep our separate names? Should she take my name? Should I take hers? Should we create a unique name to start our new family with?
2 years ago, Anita’s beloved little brother (and my brother in law) Jody died. He was the only (close) family she knew and it hurt her more deeply than anyone can imagine. I realized that now, with Jody gone, the name “Wirawan”, meaning “hero”, the name her father had given her, was at risk of dying too. It was at that time I made my decision and told Anita.
I wanted to change my name. I wanted our children, and our children’s children to carry on the name that meant so much to her. I wanted her to keep her connection to her brother and to know that she still has a family, in me, and in our children.
So I sought out to change it. It took forever, I had to wait weeks while it was posted in the paper, anxious, excited, giddy. Then I went to court, explained to the judge my reason for wanting my new name (My wonderful wife Anita). And the judge approved it!
So now it is official.
My name is Jennifer Wirawan.
I got on the scale this morning to a very happy surprise! It is official – I have now lost 32 pounds!
What is the big deal about 32 pounds you ask?
Have I reached my goal? No
Am I halfway there? No
Do I get a special treat at 32 pounds? No
So why do I care about 32 pounds?
Because its 1 pound more than yesterday, because its 5 pounds more than 2 weeks ago, because its 32 pounds more than when I started… Because 32 pounds is a LOT!
My goal in the end is to lose a total of 86 pounds (54 more!). I know I can do it. I have lots of things to help me. I have a beautiful wife who is there for me and supports me, an elliptical machine, a great program I found (myfitnesspal)… oh yeah, and 86 extra pounds.
Wish me luck on this journey of mine, I know I can make it… It wont be easy, definitely not as easy as getting this overweight was, but it IS possible.
I saw the coolest quote the other day, and it keeps me motivated:
“Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels”
My weight loss tracker now
Pancakes
“I would never give my son in law a burnt pancake.” He said shortly before handing his daughter one.
Homeless
Homeless. Sleeping at a picnic table. Wake up to teenagers my age throwing rocks and laughing. They’re with an adult.
As you may or may not know, February 26th was my brother Jody Wirawan’s birthday. Anita had already told me that she wanted to do something special on his website to commemorate the day, and to help keep his memory alive. I had no idea what that was, until about a week before, when I came home to:
“Hey honey, you want to see what I’m doing for Jody’s birthday?”
“Yeah, whatcha got?”
“Check this out!” (shows me a basic version of a google map API with points on the map representing places Jody had been/lived)
I LOVED IT! I thought it was a great idea for his website. Not only had Jody loved to travel, but Anita loves maps, so it was a great thing for her to do for him.
First off she found some of what we needed at Mike Williams’ Google Maps API tutorial. Anita wanted to combine some of the aspects of the tutorial, and she asked me to help her. Being as some of the coding took me a while to figure out, I thought I would share here for anyone who might be trying to find the same thing.
Anita wanted Tabbed Markers. They look really cool and the final map and really help you add different types of information without taking up too much space on the users screen. However, The code for the “TabbedMarkers” and for the “Markers” was a bit different, and took me a bit to figure out.
The problem was that the “Tabbed Markers” code does not allow for the markers to show up in the nifty sidebar she had created. The sidebar needed the marker to have a name and not just contents. To fix this, I changed:
function createTabbedMarker(point,htmls,labels)
to
function createTabbedMarker(point,name,htmls,labels)
Then I entered the following part of the code to create a corresponding link in the sidebar:
var point = new GLatLng(51.16569,10.45153);“Name here”
var marker = createTabbedMarker(point,,["contents here", "contents here", "contents here"],["Tab 1 name", "Tab 2 name", "tab 3 name"]);
map.addOverlay(marker);
After setting up all the points, it was time to enter stuff into the “contents” section (the area where all the information is). Everything was going smoothly until I tried to enter any images or links. Using images or links would cause the code to break and the map wouldn’t even load. After staring at the code for quite a while, I thought it might be the quotes (” “) around where the contents for each tab go. Being as IMG tags and link tags both require that quotes be used, I thought that might be what was causing the problem.
Just for the heck of it I tried surrounding the “contents” in apostrophes ( ‘ ) instead of quotes to look like so:
['contents here', 'contents here', 'contents here'],["Tab 1 name", "Tab 2 name", "tab 3 name"]);
map.addOverlay(marker);
And it worked! Link/IMG problem solved. (One thing to note here, since apostrophe’s are used as markers for when the code starts/ends, in order to enter an apostrophe into the text, you need to use the code ’ wherever you want one. So “you’re” would look like you’re.) On to the next one….
One of the issues with the map was that it stayed on the same zoom level from the beginning, and through every coordinate. Anita and I wanted it to start out zoomed far out to show every point on the map, but to zoom in when a point was clicked. After some research and lots of testing, I found a solution.
In the map is the code:
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(17.97873,-146.95313), 2); .
This code simply tells the map that on startup, to set center of map to 17.97873,-146.95313 and a zoom level of “2″. I knew that this was the solution, if only I could figure out how to tell the map to use that on startup, but to use a new coordinate and zoom level upon clicking on a marker.
I again looked at the code for creating the tabbed markers and added a line that tells the map to zoom in on the coordinates of the maker at a zoom level of “12″ when the marker is clicked. It worked! Here it is:
function createTabbedMarker(point,name,htmls,labels) {
var marker = new GMarker(point, myIcon);
GEvent.addListener(marker, "click", function() {
map.setCenter(marker.getLatLng(), 12);
if (htmls.length > 2) {
htmls[0] = '<div style="width:'+htmls.length*88+'px">' + htmls[0] + '<\/div>';
(that is only part of the code, for representation purposes)
I still havent figured out to make the zoom level different for each marker. That particular code simply zooms in once, and keeps the same zoom level for every marker. Pretty handy if you want to start your map zoomed out, but then get more detail when a marker is chosen. If anyone knows how to set a different zoom level for each marker, let me know!
Whats next?
Anita and I both agreed that the map would be much more user friendly if the user could click on “next” and “previous” links instead of using the sidebar to follow the map. After some searching in the code, I found the following line (used for the sidebar):
<a href="javascript:myclick(' + (gmarkers.length-1) + ')">' + name + '<\/a>
I realized that this is probably exactly what I needed so I added that to bottom of the marker bubble, but replaced ‘ + name + ‘ with “next” (without the quotes).
It worked amazing! The only problem was, it didn’t go to the next marker, it went to the previous one! Easy enough to fix, I changed
(gmarkers.length-1) to (gmarkers.length+1)
Voila! A “Next” Button!
As you can imagine, to make the “previous” button, I simply used the first version of the code, which caused the markers to go backwards.
I am by no means an expert at Google Maps API, but I wanted to share this information for people like me who get code, but need a push in the right direction.
Want to see the finished map? Go to Jody Wirawan’s Interactive Biography Map.
I can’t remember how many friends and family members have said the words “I don’t agree with you, but I love you” to me. I couldn’t tell you how many times someone said “I love you despite you being gay.” I don’t know how many times I thought to myself “WOW! This person really cares about me, even though they don’t agree with me.” I wish I had loved myself more at the time, then I would have decided not to associate with people who loved me DESPITE who I am.
WHOA! Jennifer, calm down….did you just say that you would not have been friends with them. Yup, that’s what I’m saying.
Let me ask you this. How would you react if you heard someone say, to another human being, “I love you Tom, I don’t agree that you are black, but I still love you.” or how about “We can still be friends, despite the fact that you are a woman.” or even “If you only TRIED being white, maybe you would like it?”. Why do we, as a people, continue to accept the discrimination of other human beings? I will tell you why, because the ones discriminated against (like me) allow it to happen. I allow people to love me “despite” my gayness. I allow people to believe that it doesn’t hurt me to my very core to know that even the people who talk to me every day, hang out with me, call me their friend, only care about me DESPITE my being gay. These people, who believe that my marriage doesn’t have the same value as theirs, believe that I shouldn’t have kids, and believe that I can be “changed”, these are the people that I once called friends.
A very good friend of mine recently told me that they were against gay marriage. I tried to play it off like I didn’t care, even told myself (and them) that I respected their opinion, and that they had a right to it. I firmly believe that everyone has the right to their own opinion.
Little did I know this conversation would lead me through days and days of self examination and realization. During this time I examined my feelings about the situations that have strongly affected my life lately. For instance Jody dying, my wife of 10 years being devastated beyond belief and barely able to function, and the election of our next president, Barack Obama.
A lot of things go through your mind when someone dies. Contrary to my earlier assumption, life is not forever, people do actually cease to exist and there isn’t anything you can do about it. And when someones life does end, it leaves behind a wake of destruction that can take years to repair. As I sit in this wake of destruction, and focus all of my energy on taking care of Nita, I realize my own mortality and the reality of what would happen to her if I were to die. Nita and I have been together for over 10 years. She is the love of my life and our relationship grows stronger every day. But because we are the same sex, we cannot get married. Because so many people have decided to write discrimination into the constitutions of their states we are just two people living together.
The historic election of Barack Obama is a good step for our country. Whether you believe in his views or decisions for our country, you have to agree that it is amazing that we elected our first black president. I find it sad that while the majority of Americans looked past the color of President Obamas skin to vote him into the highest office our country can offer, those same Americans decided to discriminate against same sex couples by voting against our right to marriage.
I’ve never been a very good writer; I have a hard time expressing myself in every situation, in person or in words.
I think Nita said it best when she wrote these words to me: “It sucks to be excluded from my family because of prejudice. It sucks to have people stare at us on any given day just because we’re being affectionate to each other in public. It sucks to hear people say that if we got legally married then that would usher in the era of people marrying dogs or whatever creepy perverted scenarios they come up with to try and scare folks nowadays. It sucks to have to wait around for everybody to catch up to what we already know is true…or to maybe think that those we love will never catch up at all. But none of it would be as bad as to live my life without you. Or to have to pretend to the world that I’m not deeply in love with you.”
If you told me you didn’t believe blacks should have equal rights, I would not associate with you.
If you told me women were below men, I would not talk to you.
If you tell me you don’t believe I should have the right to get married to the love of my life for 10 years, we cannot be friends.
Credit goes to Nita for making this wonderful video. You can comment on it and rate it here
This blog is way over due. We went to Indonesia in April. While in Indonesia, I had all these great plans of how I was going to write this blog. I even had parts of it written in my head. However, when we came back home, life kinda caught up with us. I had to go back to work, I did a lot of work with the Relay for Life, I hurt my foot, and I avoided writing the blog. I avoided writing the blog for two reasons. One, because I absolutely HATE to write. I don’t think I’m very good at it, and that’s reason enough :-). Two, I didn’t want to overshadow the immense emotions of the trip, and the personal struggle that my wife fought with while we were there. Anita has done an amazing job of describing her struggle in – Going to Indonesia. And meeting my Dad. After twenty years. (Part 1 and 2).
So, after taking a break, getting a bunch done at work and nearly losing my foot doing the Relay for Life (that’s a different blog), here it is. The long awaited blog about Indonesia…
10: Try the food!
There are so many wonderful things to eat in Indonesia I don’t think I could cover it all! However my absolute favorite? Lemper Ayam – Rice Rolls with Chicken Filling. OH MY GOSH! This stuff was HEAVEN! They have it for breakfast in Indonesia. Basically it is chicken in a very good sauce wrapped in sticky rice and then wrapped in a banana leaf. Nita told me that when I get the ingredients she will make it for me. YUM YUM! We also went (twice actually) to a great Japanese restaurant chain that had the most wonderful teriyaki beef you could imagine.
9: Go to McDonalds.
Okay, I know I mentioned food above, but this one deserves a number all its own. McDonalds in Indonesia is quite an experience! First off, they serve strange things on the menu. What do I mean by strange? I mean fried chicken, sticky rice, chicken noodle soup and Scrambled eggs! And they serve them all together, just like that in a meal. More strange things about McD’s in Indonesia are that instead of giving you ketchup with your fries (yes they still have fries) they give you Sambal Oelek, which is a chili sauce. You have to specifically ask for ketchup, but don’t say ketchup – they don’t know what that is. You have to say “Tomato sauce” and then they look at you funny…silly American! Oh, and one more thing, McDonalds in Jakarta DELIVERS! That’s right, all you have to do is call and order and they will load your happy meal (or chicken meal) on a motorcycle and zip it right over to your house.
8: Take a Tour.
Well we were tourists weren’t we? Luckily there are lots of touristy things to do in Indonesia, unluckily there aren’t many tour guides in Indonesia that can speak English well enough for me to understand it! We went to some great places, to include palaces, temples, museums, the national monument, and heard some great stories – I think. You see, even though apparently speaking English is a job requirement to be a tour guide, speaking it so other English speaking people can understand you, is not. Most of the tour guides spoke very good English, in the sense of they used the right words at the right time, the problem was that their accent was so thick, you had to listen VERY carefully to understand any word they said. Then they would look at you for some type of reaction to what they just told you. You know that awkward time when you don’t know if you should go “Oh I see” or “that’s terrible!” or “hahaha, I never knew that!”. You do know immediately, however, if you’ve said the wrong thing!
7: Go Shopping.
Shopping in Indonesia is crazy, if you are in a traditional shop that is. While in Yogyakarta, Nita, her dad and I went walking along the streets looking at all the sidewalk shops. It was very interesting, and we got some great souvenirs. Luckily we had Nitas dad around though, as the shop owners will ask you for a ridiculously high amount for their wares, and you have to haggle them down about 50% before it’s a fair price. If you are not in the mood to go walking down a long sidewalk to buy souvenirs, simply be a tourist and walk into a touristy place! The shop keepers will come to you, running up to you and pressing their wares into your face and begging you to buy them! You can say no as much as you want, they will keep following you until they see someone more interesting or you enter a building. In one case, the peddler stood outside the building we were in looking through the window until we came out, and then he followed us to our car! Talk about persistent!
6: Ride in a Becak.
A Becak is bicycle type vehicle with bench seating in the front. The Becak driver rides the bike behind the bench seat, pushing it forward. It is a popular mode of transportation in Indonesia (although not in Jakarta as they are now banned). They are lots of fun, however I just couldn’t help but feel guilty for the poor guy driving it!
5: Visit some SUPER OLD temples!
We went to Yogyakarta and visited Borobudur, a Buddhist temple and Prambanan a Hindu temple. We were able to go all the way to the top of Borobudur and see all the cool intricate carvings that tell the story of the life of Buddha. Regretfully we weren’t able to get too close to Prambanan as it had recently been severely damaged by an earthquake and was being repaired.
4: Go for a Drive.
If you want a true Jakarta experience, simply get in a car (or on a motorcycle if you’re crazy enough), buckle your seatbelt and hang on! The traffic in Jakarta is INSANE! There are no speed limits, or road rules and very little traffic lights. It’s to each his own, and everyone knows it! Every time we went for a drive Nita and I were sure we would not make it home alive. The traffic jams in Jakarta are intense and involve hundreds of cars and even more motorcycles all trying to get ahead of you. Have you ever seen a motorcycle break the road rules by going in between two cars or even on the shoulder? Well, in Jakarta, not only is that what EVERY motorcycle does, but it’s also what the cars do! I’ve never seen two cars get so close to each other in my life. A three lane road will be 5-6 cars thick with TONS of motorcycles squeezing through at every possible opening. Seriously, you’d have to see it to believe it. I have some videos of it, if anyone ever wants to see, just let me know.
3: Survive the Horrendous bathrooms!
Wow! I bet you think im kidding…but the bathrooms in Indonesia are scary things to behold. First off, they do not use toilet paper in Indonesia, (im not quite sure why). Instead, they use sprayers…which are kind of hard to get used to. That is of course if you are lucky enough to find a bathroom with one, otherwise you have a squatter (EW!) or a tap with a bucket, that has who knows how many germs on it! Needless to say, we didn’t go to public bathrooms unless it was a SUPER emergency…the bathrooms in the house and in the hotel were nice enough though.
2: Get attacked by an ostrich!
OH MY GOD! Did you see the beak on that thing? They are a LOT scarier when they are 6 inches away from you…I promise! (Oh, and if you didn’t have your volume up when you watched that video, you wasted your time! It’s MUCH better with sound.)
1: Reconnect with family.
I have to say that the number one reason to visit Indonesia (for my wife and I) is definitely to visit our wonderful family. I loved all of them, and although I found out in the end that none of them knew that I was part of the family, I still felt like they treated me as if they had known me forever. They bestowed Nita and I with gifts, food (WAY to much food), a beautiful place to live while we were there, and ENDLESS entertainment. If it weren’t for all of these wonderful people, we wouldn’t have even gone to Indonesia, much less had such a GREAT time while we were there.
