Ooma Review

In August, I bought a phone gadget called Ooma. You can go to their website to get a full exposure of what it is etc here. For me, I am using it for money saving cost for international calls between my parents and my family in US. We talk pretty frequently and I have been paying around $20-ish per month for long-distance international calls on my land line. So in a year, I amp paying around $300 for international calls and that's just me. If my mom calls me from Indonesia, I don't pay anything but she pays her international charge from her phone carrier.

Prior to this, I was considering other options such as Skype, Vonage (or any other VoIP solutions), MSN/YM web-cam chats, etc - but nothing seems to work as good as Ooma as a whole experience.

So, if you are calling internationally a lot and want to save some money, you may want to consider Ooma. Read my experience with it and why is it my solution of choice after the jump.

REQUIREMENT
You will need a broadband connection for Ooma to be able to works as expected. The connection speed where I hooked up my Ooma with is pretty modest (768dl and 256ul), but so far it works pretty well as soon as the internet is not used up for heavy downloading.

COST
Ooma will cost you around $200 up-front. Unlike Vonage or other VoIP solutions, which are using subscription model, Ooma actually sells you a device AND you do NOT need to pay anything else. You have the option to add more advance options stuff if you want (and you do have to pay for them) - but I don't need them - so I only pay $200 for the device and that's it. So right of the bat, Ooma is a CHEAPER solution in the long run compared to Vonage ($15 / mo).

INTERNATIONAL CALLS
But Ooma's website says it will charge you if you are calling internationally? Yes, that is right. What I did:

1. Registered my Ooma under my name
2. Gave it a local number (so area code is the same as my home phone, my cell, my wife's cell, and my office number)
3. Setup the device at my home (very easy) and test it for several hours (or days if you want)
4. Send the device to my parents and tell them how to hook it up with their broadband internet router
5. Plug a cordless phone to the device.

This setup enables me to call my parents anytime without incurring international calling cost. If I call them from my home phone, it is FREE. If I call from my cell phone, I only lose my cell-minutes. If I call from the office phone, it's FREE. And ... they also can call me anytime for FREE.

PHONE / AUDIO EXPERIENCE
My experience with Ooma as a far as audio quality has been great. Only a few times that my mom would call me and the sound quality were like broken up - those were caused by my dad/brother downloading MS updates/photos/music from the internet. Once they stopped the download and recalled, quality back to clear and no delay. It is basically as good as calling from a land-line to another land-line locally; clear, no delay, and full duplex quality.

WEB-CAM/SKYPE?
Webcam/Skype kind of requires you to sit in front of a computer. To hook it up to a regular phone, you have to buy an extra device to connect and then maintaining the software, etc. I am ok with all that, but I don't think my parents is quite a tech-savvy to able to handle all that. Ooma is a stand-alone hardware, plug and play. No software, no computer, just plug into the router, connect your own phone, and voila!

All in all, after 4 months of usage - I am very satisfied with Ooma and recommend you to use it if you have the need for frequent long distance calling like me.
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Jonathan is 3 years old - time flies!

Three years ago, early December was nervous time for me. Helen, my wife, was pregnant and the baby is due anytime. Jonathan was born Dec 10th 2005, 7am, @ Riverside hospital - 51cm, 7lbs 8oz. There were no complications, the delivery was smooth, and we went home being proud parents.


The first couple of months were rough. Helen sister stayed with us for the rest of the year and went home end of December. My mom came after that and stayed for 2 months to help us along. Jonathan loves his milk and he had no problem with food or milk. He had eczema on his cheeks which worried us for a bit, but after the 1st year and a half it pretty much went away. He started eating solid food at 4 months, and by that time, Jon could hold his own bottle. He was huge fir his age at the time - I believed he was in the 70-90 percentile back then.
Another thing we worried about back then was that Jon threw up a lot, especially when he was crying. This led us to eventually not allowing him to sleep by himself in the crib until he was almost 2 years old. Putting a humidifier in his room helps a lot too.

Jon started walking on his own when he was 11 months. I remembered that his first attempt to walk across the room in our living room was during a OSU-Michigan game (OSU won 42-39 - GO BUCKS!!). He was a fast walker and he was the type that cannot stay still - so we installed gates in our house to prevent him from going too far or going into unsafe rooms. Grandma and grandpa came during Jon's 1st birthday and we threw a party. Since the Buckeyes were going to National Championship that year, the theme for the party was "Buckeyes". Everybody came wearing scarlet or grey apparels. Even though Jon has not understand football yet at the time, but he was able to respond to "O-H" with an "I-O"! I was soo proud ...

Jon 1st birthday party!


Jon and his first snow ...


Jon's first haircut - done by mommy and daddy!


Halloween!

By the time Jon was 2 years old, he was talking Indonesian and English, sleeping on his own bed, ate all kinds of food, understand that OSU is the best, what an email is, how to chat to daddy, etc etc.

Jon's 2nd birthday party - can't wait to eat cake!

Yesterday was Jon's 3rd birthday - o how time flies. He is wearing bigger clothes now, brushes hi own teeth, talks in full sentences, ask the most difficult question I can ever imagined ("Why daddy has to go to work?"), loves staying in a cabin, etc. Jon loves his train set (me too) and looking forward to have it expanded. Taking pictures of Jon regularly also pays off big time.


BTW, Jon now has his own blog, written by mommy - http://jonathansetiabudi.blogspot.com, check it out.
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SLANK CONCERT!

SLANK concert @ Columbus was awesome. It was a part of INDIGO - an annual celebration for Indonesian students in Columbus, OH. Ticket price was decent, $20 (or $25 at the door), you get plenty of Indonesian food, tons of drinks, a performance by Columbus band and of course, SLANK!



I was in charge of setting up the sound system. We rented our house and monitor equipment as well as some backline equipments. SLANK & crew brought their own guitar amp head - a Marshall JCM 2000 and their own Bass head - AMPEG. Bimbim is endorsed by PREMIER drum - but since we could not find a PREMIER kit locally, we compromised and use another brand - and instead of renting, we borrowed one - from ME! So YES, it was my drum kit that was used during the concert by SLANK! One of their guitarist, Ridho could not make it - somehow he could not get a visa by US embassy.

Between 1pm until 4pm, there was a lot going on. The food came in and there were several people arranging them, putting them into boxes, putting all the drinks in cooler to chill, etc. We prepared around 400 boxes of Indonesian meal - that is a lot of boxing! Our food is sponsored by an Indonesian restaurant in Columbus called TASTE OF BALI. They are located @ Carriage Place on Bethel Rd, next to the dollar theater. I tasted the food - it was awesome!

Preparing ourfood:


We picked up our drum kit from my house around 10am and went straight to SLANK's hotel. We met with SLANK's crews - Dado & Wahyu as well as Sonny - their sound engineer. We arrived at the concert hall @ Ohio Expo Center - Rhodes Hall by 11am and the FoH & monitor equipments are already arriving and being setup by our rental company. SLANK at this point stayed behind @ hotel and they were going to meet several friends in the soccer tournament.

We proceeded in setting up our equipment and by noon-ish, we are all set. We went to lunch, stopped by a guitar shop to get several guitar stands, and went back to the concert hall to do sound check. After an hour or so sound check - we are ready to ROCK!!!

SLANK's crews:


At 4pm-ish, our opening band showed up for sound check. They are doing 4 songs. SLANK was kind enough to let the opening band borrowed their equipment (guitar head & bass head & snare drum). These guy never sounded that good before - primarily because of the quality of the sound system equipment and the sound engineer we hired.

All of our crews are on location right now, arranging furniture, preparing tickets, finalizing food preps, etc. The door opens @ 5:30pm and opening band to get on the stage @ 7pm.

Our MCs - Bebe & Aree:


Openning band - Columbus band:


SLANK in the waiting room:


Jon & Helen:


After the concert, SLANK's crews and I cleaned up the stage, as well as the backline and FoH & monitor rental crews. SLANK was in their waiting room with fans taking pictures, singing autograph, etc. At around 10:30pm, everything was done, and we drove back to SLANK's hotel. I helped SLANK's crews packed their equipments for their next flight to NY. Sonny gave me a used snare and I got SLANK's autographs on it. We went to Raising Cane's for late late supper, had a great talk with Ivan outside, and rolled home @ around midnight.

Long live SLANK & SLANKERS!
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INDIGO featuring: SLANK!

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Indonesian Independence Day (63rd)

August 17th, 1945 - Indonesia declared its independence from the Japanese. Just several days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, Japan called a retreat and removed themselves from their colonies, including Indonesia. Indonesian people took their chances and declared independence - where the forming and planning of the declaration itself was full of drama for nationalistic sake!

Here is the short text of the declaration itself:

Kami, bangsa Indonesia, dengan ini menjatakan kemerdekaan Indonesia.

Hal-hal jang mengenai pemindahan kekoeasaan d.l.l., diselenggarakan dengan tjara saksama dan dalam tempo jang sesingkat-singkatnja.

Djakarta, hari 17 boelan 8 tahoen 05

Atas nama bangsa Indonesia

Soekarno - Hatta

Read the short version of the history here.

It is even sweeter this time since Indonesia won gold medal in the Olympic for men's double badminton. We actually got several medals.

It is very tempting to actually disown Indonesia as my motherland, but I believe that I was born and raised in Indonesia for a reason - a divine reason. Indonesia is still my home, even though I have been away for a while. So one of my purpose in staying in US for a while is to absorb as much as possible so that I can use those in my country - as time goes by, the stronger the affections grow.

My vision for now is help other Indonesian Christians so that they have a vision and passion to make impact in their communities for Christ - while trying to bring an impact in the Indonesian community from US, and eventually be able to go home to Indonesia and have a direct involvement and impact over there.
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