Well, I had special guests visiting our new office a while ago. They are Pinot, Dita, Arwen, Leia, and Neo, affectionally called the pinodita.com family 🙂

We met through the wonderful world of internets, I think way back when I was active in one of the Apple related mailing list, Pinot has always been seen this funny-laid back guy who’s been around and knows what he’s doing when it comes to Apple stuff.

But the thing that intrigue me the most is about the stories surrounding their family, especially when one day they decided to move out of Jakarta to find new adventures in Kuwait.

For a family to name their kids Arwen (Lord of The Rings) – Leia (Star Wars) and Neo (The Matrix) – they had to be an interesting one.

For a family to name their kids Arwen (Lord of The Rings) – Leia (Star Wars) and Neo (The Matrix) – they had to be an interesting one. And they sure do. One look at their flickr feed and you know they led an interesting life. From what I know, daddy’s a full-time designer+techie+geek+mac evangelist+part time clown/artist, and mommy’s a stay at home supermom who’s a photographer and can bake cookies and decor the house and do crafty stuff. Mix that with three little children, and there you have it 😉 I also know that they don’t have a TV, they draw on their walls, the children make their own toys, and they make dresses out of used curtains.

I love what they are doing with the children. There’s a mentality of “why not?” in their lives. Out of the ordinary, out of what people used to do. I think, the kids will grow with memories of some excellent childhood. Togetherness, adventure, creativity, thinking outside the box.

Pinot and Dita tweet a lot, so we kinda meet quite frequent on the interwebs. When I heard they’re coming to town, right away I invited them for lunch and a photoshoot. I never met them personally, and I think this was my first time inviting internet friends over, kinda exciting.

For starters, while Dita baked us real cookies, we took some pictures on a relaxed setting. This is Arwen.

This one on the right is Leia. I refer to her as the shy one 🙂

This is Dita, or Ditut, or Mamin (replacement for Mamih)

Now, that goofy-handsome fellow, is Pinot, and the kid riding him, is Neo.

We took a couple of portraits. Not going so well for Pinot there.Love this shot.

After that, we moved to the design room, where a white wall awaits them. Footnote: Pinot is the son of Dwi Koen, the legendary Indonesian artist who draws Panji Koming on your Kompas comic section for what, 20 years? And I think Pinot have that sense of art from his father. He drew my face on the wall for like 4 seconds. (Look, it’s the fat chinese guy with glasses!)Neo literally fell asleep in mid-eating, with the chocolate still on his hands. Too cute.

All in all, we had so much fun. I had so much fun. I hope they did too.

I learned two things from their visit:

1. Penpal is alive and kicking! You can have friends from Kuwait or Kapoor and if the opportunity arises, you can meet them in person. Exchange stories from a faraway places, get a laugh, broaden your horizon. Nothing is cooler.
2. You can go out of the way, the ‘how we used to do it’ when you raise your family. If everything fails, you still have each other. Awesome.

You lucky man Pinot. And you Dita.