the big escapades

orange juice

2011-10-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

i swim in your river flow
blinded by the beauty of yours
your energizing sunset color
drips of you fall on the floor
pinning me at once in the soil of excitement

i swim in your river flow
with the pulps running through
the reason why my heart beats of joy
as you embrace me when dawn breaks

you drew me closer yet could i not hesitate
so tantalizing your sight is it blinds me
deceiving my every thoughts

you come, invited
penetrating with desire
bomb of invigorating ticks,
explodes inside me within a minute
disintegrating all weariness

your taste embraces me tight
paralyzing every nerves
spreading inside me

yet now your sunset color is no more
your flow is no more
releasing exhilaration
drowning me in the sea of fervour

remains of you dissolve
come to embody inside me
leaving bits of smile in heart

parts of me crawl
as they beg for more of you

Wew, I never thought I'd post a poem up here. I made it within a minute merely as a challenge I accept from Elda. Well at least now you know how much I love orange juice :)

Chinese speakers needed

2011-10-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

I was scrambling through 4 e v e r love group on Facebook and happened to find a long lost article I wrote a year ago.
Ironically, the article was published in Chinese for a local Taiwanese newspaper, much contrary to its original version (English). Even MORE ironically, I can't seem to understand any of it.
Anyway, it's translated t0 Chinese by my mom

To make matters even worse, I have seemingly lost the original document :'(

Click on the article above to get you to the article page.

Memorable journey - Overseas Chinese youth to participate in Taiwan to observe the group felt
Fourth team: Chen Keisha

At the Taoyuan International Airport, we are the fourth team counselors are college friends hugged, we cried, three weeks time off so fast, blink of an eye, to observe the group's journey coming to an end. Like yesterday, to arrive at the Taoyuan International Airport today to say goodbye.

Bear, bear three weeks in daily life counselor, enthusiasm could not bear to Taiwan, could not bear to college friends. While the short get together, we must separate. I heard the sound of treasure goodbye. The deep friendship and I will remember in their hearts, will never fade!

Aircraft arrived at Soekarno - Hatta Airport, college friends once again embrace, we are devotion.

Here I would like to thank you stay in Indonesia, but Taiwan Alumni Association President Chen Wen aunt, she was busy, made a special trip to the airport to pick us before you leave hungry she was afraid of our journey, came to give each of us a bread, She is like a good aunt, each of us carefully Dingning Zhao, this situation, we will never forget, but the text Thank you Auntie.

In Taiwan, three weeks, I learned a lot in school, not something I learned tai chi, how paper fan, do Hakka cuisine (HAKA TRADITIONAL TEA), doing MOCI cake.

To observe the group's itinerary is very rich, we visited the Tokai University, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, National Palace Museum, the famous scenic spot - Sun Moon Lake, and let me know Taiwan's history, colorful culture of Taiwan, Taiwan is also aware of the traditional Chinese arts and culture center. We visited a temple of Taiwan's traditional architectural style, folk culture and art, like paper-cut art is one of them.

In my Chinese regiment is the worst, in fact, not difficult to learn Chinese, Chinese grammar is not troublesome, unlike the English in the past tense, present tense, or future-style grammar. See college friends are talking about fluent Chinese, I said to myself, came back, I have to work harder to learn Chinese. Come on! Keisha.

In Taiwan, you can also see Aboriginal culture, Aboriginal dance, most of them live in the mountains, and now retains complete indigenous culture. We traveled almost the whole of Taiwan, from Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, college friends almost every day in the luggage heavier. Although I am not a shopaholic, but Taiwan's something cheap, 101 Mall, Shihlin Night Market, where nostalgia are college friends.

Last night in Taipei, we can not sleep, because busy to pack up, get up early to the airport, ready to present to the counselors. Think tomorrow we should separate the thought knocked the door tomorrow, no counselor, gently wake us, I kept thinking, I was the emergence of waves of frustration and melancholy.

Thank you new fourth team of counselors small, Hippo, PIZ-ZA sister, thank you three weeks meticulous care of us, I think I give you the most trouble of the members, I do not eat pork because, every time counselors are always busy trying to help me find no pork lunch, really sorry.

Want another chance, I will then Taiwan, and we meet again, next month I will fly across the Atlantic to begin my college life, but a friendship, which I will always forever in mind - the fourth team counselors and college friends, Terrific Oh! Original: Keisha

Translation: Yi-Chu Note: This is a never accept the influence of Chinese culture and has a little girl of Chinese descent, went to the United States finished the secondary school curriculum to graduate before the privilege of participating in the "Overseas Chinese Youth Study Tour of Taiwan." three weeks of Chinese cultural atmosphere full of life and collective activities, she deeply appreciate the great Chinese culture and friendship is precious, determined in the future to learn Chinese to catch up, between the lines with smooth and lively character.

The original is in English, translated by her mother, Yi-Chu.

Excuse the lame translation. I was too lazy to fix the translation cos if I did that, the result wouldn't be much better than the original. Don't worry, I've asked my mom to send me the original document which I hope could replace the current scrawny translation. You can totally tell they're ripped out of from Google translate.

Thanks to the translated article too, I finally figured out that my Chinese name turns out to be somewhat Keisha, or something that sounds like it ;) and my mom's too - Yi-Chu. What a way to trace back my Chinese heritage.

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Anyway, moving on to the next news:

S.O.S

www.headsure.com

Uh oh, bad news coming bitchess!
Apparently my pocket camera data cable has been swapped with my dad's blackberry's data cable back in Indonesia. It answers my curiosity why - one day - I sudden found TWO Blackberry's data cables in my cable box, and none of my camera's.

By any means, I won't be able to give you updates featuring latest pictures I took from my camera. Sad, right?
I need to find a time to go to a nearest Best buy to purchase it so you guys just need to wait for that day to come.

Don't pick up the phone

2011-10-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

Not really in a story-telling mood on, but I'm just going to tell you what happened last night.
I was supposed to be going home to do my all homework before leaving to SF the next day (today), but turns out, there's always an obstacle heading in this kid's virtuous intention's way *coughs*.

I was "kidnapped" up till past midnight in Kevin and Tony's place. Just in case you don't know what makes me decide to sacrifice some of my late hours to stay there is because we were going to see a horror movie. Plus, Ardy came over all the way from Davis just to hang around here in the Bay Area.

Ardy initiated the idea of horror movie night. So I wouldn't miss the chance, cos when else could we do it? He invited a friend over, Tanuj, to bring the movie. I wasn't really a frontal anti of horror movies. I didn't necessarily manage to run off whenever someone said we were going to watch a horror movie. I love horror movies, only if I get to watch it with bunch of people. The more people see it, the more less frightening it looks. It's thousand times better than having to see it at midnight by yourself *giddy, looks around*

Anyway, One Missed Call was chosen. I was a little disappointed cos I've seen it before, but my expectation heightened when it turned out we were going to see the Japanese version (I saw the American version). So, Kevin, Tony, Aymee, Ardy, Stefan, Khoan (Kevin and Tony's roommate), his girlfriend, and I plopped down to our comfiest positions to get the best view of the screening wall. Yep, the best thing about Kevin and Tony's house is that they have a friggin projector!!!! which is even better than any large TVs.

Well, the movie itself follows about a rumor saying that whenever a person heard his phone ringing a creepy-sounding ringtone and picked it up, he got to receive a voice mailbox indicating a specific time in the future. If he proceeded to hear the voice mailbox, he got to hear his own voice, saying two to three lines followed with (usually) a scream.

The mailbox apparently foretells the death of the phone's owner. The phone's owner would be found dead by the indicated time and would recite the lines as heard from the mailbox, shortly before encountering his death. Nakamura Yumi (Shibasaki Kou) somehow finds herself entangled with the event when she witnessed people around her dying shortly after receiving the horrendous call. When she finds out the death call formed some sort of a chain connection, she knows she was the next in line and thus intended to reverse the curse or whatever caused the whole death call to occur.

The movie never stopped sending chills to me and to almost everyone in the room. The whole tension hasn't risen until the half portion of the movie, but as it was approaching the climax, Shibasaki Kou's convincing act didn't lower the rate of my pounding heart. Although I must say I was a little disappointed by the vague ending, but I didn't blame the movie for that. Japanese movie makers might just prefer to imply the ending rather than explaining it bluntly to audience like the American version does. The actors including Shibasaki and the detective guy themselves delivers great acting in the movie. However, it terms of effect, storyline, and the chilling sensation, Japanese version definitely owns it. Duh.

Along the movie, Tanuj never stopped teasing us scaredy girls by abruptly playing the One Missed Call ringtone in his own phone during the movie. Aymee and I nearly jumped off as a reaction. Moments later, Tanuj played Justin Bieber's Baby in his phone, saying that we might prefer to listen to that instead of the creepy sounding ringtone, since he thought JB's Baby was even much scarier the creepy sounding ringtone from the movie -__-

The movie was done by 1 am and as a result, I needed Ardy and Aymee to take me home. They even walked me to my door to make sure I was back safe, sound, and not paranoid.

Well...since this post mentions a lot about Shibasaki Kou, I guess I wouldn't miss the chance to mention one trivial fact I find about her. I don't know if you guys think the same, hopefully you do. I always knew Shibasaki Kou always reminds me of someone first time I saw her on Orange Days (I give my credit to Elda for introducing this drama to me).

Apparently that other look-a-like person turns out to beeee.....

No other than Victoria or Song Qian of f(x).
Don't ya think? Look at the big eyes and similar hairstyle! Only Shibasaki Kou has fiercer and sharper features.

Pictures credit to:
http://kpopislandrocks.wordpress.com/
http://www.filmfortress.com/one_missed_call_review/
http://fankykat.blogspot.com/2010/03/japanese-horror-movies.html

Dear appetite...

2011-09-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

WHERE
ART
THOU?

Did I leave you in Singapore or Indonesia?
Have you evaporated somewhere?
You haven't showed me your presence ever since I arrived back in the US.

In any case, I'm sad. I've been skipping quite some meal time.
For sure I know it doesn't sound good.

Summer in SG pt 2: Dancing Fountain

2011-09-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

Day two of Singapore!

Whoa takes me a while to get this post up! Sorry for the delay. School's been holding me up. Anyway it's going to be a little bit shorter than the last one.

I forgot what date was that, but I woke up quite late in the morning. Mom and Dad had been up since morning and they went out for a moment to look for breakfast meals. It was true that the hotel didn't offer typical breakfast meal service like any other hotels would do, but that's okay!

Around 11 (sooo late, I know right???), I got up for real and munched on Nasi Lemak my dad bought for me. My mom and dad had apparently taken a long walk to Chinatown just to get their meals and mine - very much appreciated for their effort. After brunch, I took a shower and got dressed, and we needed to decide where to go today. I heard many people were recommending Vivo City as another shopping destination. My mom and dad also agreed about going there, so it was settled then.

We took a bus ride to Orchard Road to have lunch at Lucky Plaza (second meal of the day, only an hour away from the previous one). I helped myself with a plate of chicken rice. Chicken rice is also another authentic delicacy Singapore has to offer! Shortly after, we shopped a little and decided to take a bus to Vivo City for shorter trip instead of MRT. It was raining outside so the roads were a bit slippery. Too bad we didn't bring umbrellas cos we didn't see it coming.

Vivo City is, well, huge...much bigger than any other shopping centers in Singapore. Unlike other shopping center who were connected or located next to each other in Singapore, Vivo City is an independent mall, a shopping town likely Grand Indonesia in Jakarta, only Vivo City is located at the seaside facing Sentosa Island rather than at the downtown. We strolled for a while and went to the boardwalk to take pictures.

The boardwalk itself resembles a vast veranda overlooking the sea filled with a shallow pool where everyone could practically splash into. Some fine restaurants could be found at its sides.

The boardwalk apparently didn't just overlook Sentosa Island, but also before my eyes was one of the theme parks I'd been dying to go to: Universal Studios Singapore. The infamous dueling coaster tracks and the Far Far Away castle just stood there far enough for me to reach. I was thinking once of spending the rest of the afternoon there, since my friends - who had clearly gone there - implied that the theme park is small enough you can even explore it within 2 hours. But that'd be just waste of money, so I had to skip US Singapore this time.

Dad got instantly captivated with National Geographic Store. It was actually my first time seeing it as I've never seen any of them before, not even in the US.

Dad was particularly mesmerized by a simple, blue sling back with the National Geographic logo, but he hadn't got it till later in the afternoon.

Wine festival! Dayum!!!

After nearly 3 hours strolling in Vivo City, we barely shopped anything. Mom was apparently hunting for a Bossini Store but since there was hardly any at Vivo City, I suggested we should move our shopping destination to yet another famous spot in Singapore, City Hall. I didn't know whether it should be better called City Hall cos that's not the actual name of the collection of shopping centers. I just happened to label it that way since we needed to take MRT to City Hall station, which is directly connected to the bunch of shopping centers I mentioned.

I looked up for the nearest Bossini store on my phone's internet. I believe the area should at least have one. Bossini's quite popular in Singapore and it's impossible not to find it in one of the most popular shopping spots after Orchard.

After nearly half an hour walking through the city underpass complete with rows of restaurants and clothing stores, we reached Suntec City and found a Bossini store there. At once I thought mom was getting herself something but apparently all she wanted to buy was just a pair of jeans...for me (mom, I got jeans overstock both at my home in Jakarta and even the one in Cupertino, but I really appreciate you for still buying another pair for me :')

Well, we took a while to decide where to go next cos the day was still young (it was around 5). We actually have been thinking to do a bit different activity other than eating and shopping. We needed a little bit sightseeing! Mom offered me to go on a duck tour in Marina Bay, dad mentioned a river cruise would be operating up till evening near the hotel. I quickly found out that duck tour was hella pricey! So scratch that one. River cruise sounds quite boring. The price was slightly cheaper than the duck tour though, but still I couldn't stand its expensiveness.

However, I came up with the idea of seeing "Songs of the Sea", a famous water show in Sentosa, all of a sudden. I browsed for the tickets and found out they were actually much cheaper and looked even much more promising than the duck tour and the river cruise. Too bad mom wasn't a fan of seeing "dancing water", as she mentioned.

So from Suntec City, we took a taxi straight back to Vivo City and mom would take an MRT back to the hotel from there. While my dad and I were rushing to the top floor of the mall (Sentosa station) to purchase the earliest show we could catch. Apparently the earliest one (7.00 pm-ish) was fully booked and the next one would be at 8.40 pm. The show wouldn't take much time, and in fact, only 25 minutes. So there was no need to worry not to get a transportation back home (Dude, this is not Cupertino!).

Anyway, we got the ticket. We still got an hour to go before we should depart to Sentosa by monorail. My dad and I grabbed some light meals in Burger King. Remember the simple blue National Geographic bag I talked about earlier? My dad still 'craved' for it but he kept concealing his desire to buy it. The bag had a brand though it might be incomparable to those of Gucci or Louis Vuitton. But the price wasn't so bad earlier! So I had like minutes to encourage my dad to buy it, otherwise he wouldn't stop talking about it.

There...he has it. :)

Around 8.00 pm, we took off to Sentosa island by monorail. The ticket for the show apparently came with the monorail ticket, which makes everything even much cheaper than it looks like! When passing Waterfront Station at the entrance of Sentosa, a pack of people jumbled in carrying Universal Studios Singapore goods. I wanted to go there even worse -_-

We reached the last station (Beach Station) and got to the "Songs of the Sea" venue on time. I panicked a bit since I found ourselves lining up along with what-was-supposed-t0-be a group of Thai tourists. The tour leader passed me by shouting out some random Thai words as if she was organizing everyone to enter the venue in order. Anyway, we parted with them soon and found ourselves some good seats!

The show was spectacular! I was deeply amazed by the use of many effects, involving the pyrotechnic skills, lasers, lighting, and what mesmerized me the most was no other than the water effect. The fire at first half of the show came out nicely along the drum beats. The lights beamed out to million directions accompanied by subtle music. It definitely presents those effect combined with the music. The water formed fountain and darted animations and pictures as if the water itself was a media synonymously a screen. Anyway it was a really amusing show! I could tell my dad was completely blown away! $10 wasn't left wasted for nothing! (yeah you know the reason why I reveal its price now, cos it's considerably cheap)

Before leaving, I took some pictures with the show's mascot, Oscar.

Right after the show, the venue was closed immediately but Sentosa was still crowded as ever! It seemed people hardly wanted to leave the island back to Singapore to call it the night. However, my dad and I decided to take a monorail back to Vivo City. We didn't have heavy meals for dinner so we were thinking of grabbing some in Vivo City's food court at 10pm.

Martabak for Dad

Yong Tau Fu pour moi!

The feeling of devouring the delicacies after a long, exhausting day ended with a good sight and blown away with a show could hardly be defined by words. One thing for sure, it was a good feeling.

After heavy dinner, my dad and I headed to the MRT station located below Vivo City. We caught a train back to Clarke Quay, the nearest MRT station from the hotel. The night was considerably young we even thought of taking a stroll along the river to enjoy Saturday night sight at Singapore!

I have been to Clarke Quay before. It was packed with particularly foreign tourists as you could see fine dinners with beyond-the-budget restaurants spreading all over the place. The famous dining site itself was located across the river, meanwhile my dad and I could only hear the noise of the music blared out of the restaurants from across.

On the way, we also sat by the river for a while looking up at someone being slingshot. Their scream was epic! I could imagine the feeling of nausea and extreme joyfulness overwhelming whoever sat on that very seat being bounced up to the air.

I wondered how much it would cost to try that challenge, but not so long, someone from somewhere close to where I was sitting yelled. "Thank you $40!!!" Thanks dude, now we all know how much it costs. Even if you wanted to pay me with a hundred bucks I wouldn't ever dare to give it a try :)

My dad and I continued our long walk at the seaside until we reached our hotel. We quickly slumped at the bed and that's when we knew how much energy we spent. Our feet had definitely ached so bad I wanted to plug them off and put them on my lap.

In short, we were completely worn out for that day :)

jetlag.

2011-09-24T01:59:00.000-07:00

Jetlag.
It's 2:14 am.

Need to get some sleep. I might wake up late tomorrow, but apparently there's something I need to do in the morning
Half of my soul is still left in Jakarta, and a smaller piece of it got left in Singapore.

Uh Monday, I don't want to go back to reality.
Someone please kidnap me back to the land of non-reality,
whatever you call it.

Summer in SG pt 1: Delicacies!

2011-09-22T02:52:00.000-07:00

Finally another post!
Yeah I just got back to Cupertino two days ago. So friggin jetlag, even till now. I only slept for 5 hours last night. Anyway, I'm here back to my slowly-awakening story telling mode, after a long time of being laconic. Well, let's just get started.

After spending nearly one and half month in Jakarta, I finally got to spend my last weekend in Asia not in Indonesia, but I picked a destination slightly further from the capital and out of the country border. Yup, Singapore is the one!! I haven't been there for years so it's really a thrill to finally pay our neighboring country a visit, especially I feel like Singapore is my third home (with Cupertino being the first and, Jakarta the second).

Spending one and a half month in Jakarta when you're on holiday - by any means, not doing anything in weekdays when your friends attend classes in their unis - can be hella boring. So going to Singapore is pretty much like giving me fresh air after being stuck in the messy capital city for a quite long time.

My parents and I booked the ticket exactly a week before departure. We first thought of going there on Lebaran week, but considering that there would be an explosion of people going out of town for vacation, chances to get tickets would lessen as well. So a week after Lebaran would be great cos tickets would be easier to find.

Anyway, my dad and I departed on Friday, September 16, 2011 on 9:30 am by Sriwijaya Air. Mom would catch up in the evening since she couldn't miss a day of work. There's actually a quite surprising moment on the plane. In an hour-long flight, I reckoned there wouldn't be any meals served, but apparently, there was. And even better, it's a HEAVY meal.

A slice of cake, some grapes, and the entree, traditional fried rice with sunnyside egg and spicy fried potatoes.

Sriwijaya Air I think I'm in love with you.
Nuff said.

We arrived at Changi at around 12-ish and decided to take a ride to the hotel by MRT. Oh how I miss this transportation. But since all MRT stops were nowhere really close to the hotel, we needed to stop at the closest stop (that's even quite far from the hotel) and take a taxi to the hotel. We picked Bugis to be our stop and hailed a taxi from there to the hotel.

Our hotel was located at the riverside, near Clarke Quay to be exact. Clarke Quay is a tourist attraction with many unique-themed restaurants. But if you want to dine there, you need to consider your budget cos the place is constantly dominated by foreign tourists, which means....

Anyway, I checked in with my dad at around 1.30 pm. The room was nice and all, but I was panicking over my phone which apparently didn't work in Singapore. But that wasn't just the problem. I had an appointment with my friends in an hour and I needed to get in contact with them. My phone received no signal. So I decided to swap with my dad's temporarily.

At around 2.30 pm, I went straight to Orchard Road to meet up with Eileena and Bella at Lucky Plaza, while my dad was still figuring out how to get my phone works. I give him credit for that...

Gong Cha bubble tea somewhere in Orchard Road.
Soooo darn delicious!

Then we went to Cineleisure and found a purikura booth. We decided to give it a try.
The result wasn't so bad. I kinda like how it turns out cos it automatically gives the effect of brighter skin and bolder, larger eyes, like the ones you see on cute Japanese girls (after all Purikura comes from Japan). Well, in short, it's cute! And we even got the chance to decorate each pics. The two below are randomly chosen.

From Cineleisure, we strolled down to another mall connected to Cineleisure. I don't know the name. Seriously, after landing in Singapore and getting to look around, I think the label "the city with most malls" should go to Singapore instead of Jakarta. I mean, Orchard Road is literally a road with rows of malls lining on its sides!

Oh and yes we spotted Mr Jung Yong Hwa aka the famous singer of CN Blue.
Looking good as always. I forgot what ad this is.

It was approaching 5.00 pm and we thought of having afternoon snacks. So we stopped by at a nearly crowded food court, found ourselves some seats and tried on this carrot cake. Nom nom.

The meeting ended up short cos Bella had a dinner plan with her family, and I had an appointment with my cousin coming up on 7. So I needed to rush to Bugis Junction to meet up with her. Beforehand, Eileena and I took Bella to her hotel where her family had already waited for her at the lobby. Then I was off to see my dad in front of 313 mall who was ready to take me to Bugis Junction by MRT.

And...I finally got to meet Monika, my cousin, at Bugis Junction, while my dad was leaving to pick up my mom somewhere (since she would be arriving in Singapore around late afternoon) Monika and I haven't met for nearly 8 months and she's currently studying dance in a prestigious art academy in Singapore. Look she's getting taller!
It's really sweet to finally meet her after 8 months. We're really close so you can imagine what it's like to finally reunite after a long time. Such an overwhelming feeling. Talking about sisterhood. Yeah I love her SOOOO much.

We basically just sat at the foodcourt while having dinner. I finally fulfilled one of my wishes that I hoped I could do in Singapore, which is to have a bite of its special fishball noodle soup!

Woops. Spotted: a receipt at the right hand corner of the pic :p

We spent the rest of the night just hanging out in Bugis Junction and Bugis Street, a row of shops located just Bugis Junction (The Junction's more like a mall, while the Street takes form of a marketplace selling items in lower price). I went crazy over the relatively cheap and clothes with good styles! It was unbelievable to see Monika - who lives nearby - did the same thing too. I ended up buying a nice $7 striped top and Monika got herself a different top with the same price and a wallet...WITH THE SAME PRICE!

I'm loving Singapore even more, especially I haven't explored Bugis Street before. So this place's kinda new to me.

The night was young but the half of the stores was already closed by the time we reached the Junction, leaving some restaurants opened till - maybe - midnight. I didn't know they close early at Singapore, unlike some places, which stay open till dawn especially on the weekend. I took a taxi back to the hotel, bidding Monika goodbye. We need to wait for another year to meet since we couldn't possibly meet the other day (she was so occupied with the whole Dance symposium she was participating that weekend, she even - I guess - sneaked out to see me. Love her even more).

Once I got back to the hotel, I was sooooo surprised to see my hotel room empty. My parents weren't there. Apparently my mom's flight happened to be delayed and I had to wait for them till around 11. When they reached my hotel room, my mom decided to get some rest while...my appetite suddenly kicked in. *horror music on*
My dad - who was also hungry all of a sudden - decided that we should look for something to eat that late evening. AMEN, it's not just me!!!!

We strolled around the famous riverside that we could access through the hotel's restaurant's door to see if there were some restaurants open. Across the river was a sophisticated looking German cafe - Bacchus - that provides beer and liquors with subtle, somehow exclusive vibe. I could see some young adults were sipping on their beer taken from a giant pitcher, and some couples had a warm talk with their wines before them on the table.

At first I was tempted to dine in since they had this bunch selection of fine, imported white wines, but since it lacks of family-friendly atmosphere, we decided to skip it.

Some part of the German cafe I talked about

Since no more restaurants were spotted around, we decided to go back to the hotel and had our midnight snack at the hotel's restaurant. I had cream soup for the appetizer then, my dad and I shared a super giant spaghetti! I mean, the size was totally ridiculous it even exceeded the space in the plate. I remembered mentioning the word "shared" to the maître d’ in hopes the spaghetti would come in a standard one portion. But apparently the maître d’ mistook the word "shared" and possibly interpreted it as in "two portions of spaghetti in a plate". Gee. No wonder.

Forgive my expressionless face.
I didn't know my dad was taking a picture of moi while waiting for our order.

Then I wrapped the night by watching The Haunting in my hotel's room. Can't wait for the other day to come! Another adventure in Singapore awaited!

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Total Food consumed that day:
- Sriwijaya Air meal
- Macaroon
- Gong Cha Bubble Tea
- Carrot Cake
- Fishball noodle soup
- Cream soup
- Spaghetti

Wow, Singapore, seriously, do you put some sort of enchantment on your visitors to become big eaters?

-To be continued-

Jakarta Pt 6: Bring the noise!

2011-09-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

Following my part-time job and some random activities during my 1 1/2 month of summer vacation in Indonesia, I've got a special project (not really) to work on. Actually it's my dad's but I'm there to aid him or in short, be some kind of his assistant. Besides, it's not just any project. Remember the previous post? It has something to do with this post's topic.

Sooo basically my dad helped this freshly established music club grow, along with my former homeroom teacher - Mr B - as the advisor. Thus dad constantly comes to coach every Wednesday during after school time. I was fortunate to attend the club meetings and witness all the fun to kill my boring afternoon.

Mr B and dad arranged the accompaniment using guitar

Rani the main vocalist

Tabitha had fun with the cajon

The multitalented Ambar demonstrated her ability on piano

I honestly felt so lame seeing these girls rocking the music. They've got some serious talents there for the world to see. When I visited them (as seen from the pictures), they were rehearsing for the upcoming school anniversary event. My dad and I helped them picking the suitable songs that we believed not just students, but teachers, adults, and other guests as well would enjoy.

The decision settled on doing the acoustic cover on Katy Perry's Firework and Ello's Buka Semangat Baru for the performance. Those songs coincidentally deliver similar message which is to cheer someone up.

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On Saturday the same week, I came to school right after attending a club reunion to observe the final rehearsal before the D-day.

Too bad I missed the rehearsal (cos I was late for an hour or so) but the gathering wasn't over not till we munched on the JCO donuts I brought for the girls and Mr B. Anyway the pictures above were taken by my dad who had been at school since the beginning of the rehearsal. I asked for the girls' progress and seemed everyone was ready for the D-day! Good to hear!

Recess time people!
To be honest I love these pictures below. They strongly show the hardwork expressed from the faces of these girls and how they finally got some time to relax. Even though I might not participate much and I was merely an audience, I truly appreciate the effort they've put for the performance. They deserve thumbs up for that!

Right after the recess, we all decided to go home since it was already dark. But we couldn't miss any single moment to take some more pictures!

This additional picture features Pak Pendi and Pak Aji who are also school staff, who apparently happened to be at school as well during that time :)

Sadly, I didn't get to meet the girls after this meeting. Last time I heard from Mr B that the girls were doing a great job on the school anniversary as expected, drawing the attention of not just school staff but the foundation members as well.

This means a bright future awaits for these talented girls!
Wishing all the best for the music club!

Stay tuned for the next post, cos I'm going to cover my Singapore vacay!

Jakarta Pt 5: School visit

2011-09-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

Heya!!!
Finally I get to post something daily-related.
It's been a pain uploading all the pics, but it wasn't till I realized all the pics I've been uploading are HQ, forcing me to compress all files into smaller sizes.

On Friday a few weeks ago, I went to school to meet up with my dad who has an appointment with my former homeroom teacher - Mr B regarding the development of a new music club at school (too bad they established it right after I graduated).

Beforehand, my friend - Widya - and I did a little strolling around school grounds and reminisce our times. Pretty much like this. the school's been temporarily moved to a new location, since the old one where I used to attend was under reconstruction. But despite all of that, the whole school atmosphere still felt very familiar to me!

P.S: You might not find any pictures with me in it due to some bad-hair-day issue, except the last picture cos it looks much better than the rest.

Cafeteria. Barely changes.

The Locker remains the same. Unlike lockers in American school, my school's lockers are categorized into classes and teachers like to place exam results and graded assignments in there.

Some girls spotted doing some kind of after school activity.

MY. CLASS!
Too bad I couldn't get in. It's locked.

All classrooms are now unexceptionally equipped with an operating computer and infocus.
How awesome is that?

Widya poses as a civic education teacher. Yeah right.

Last but not least, I met up with my dad who was jamming with Mr B and some other teachers, like Mr Jemmy (who's singing below). Another friend of mine, Carmen, caught up with me and Widya and we all ended up singing to random songs that day! I was completely unprepared with the whole spontaneous jam session. I don't memorize most song lyrics and they only instinctively popped out of jam session. So I ended up looking up on my mobile's internet for lyrics. It loads darn slow. -_-

After the jam was over, my dad dropped me, Carmen, and Widya at PIM, where we strolled for a while before settling in Area 51 food court to have dinner.
So I decided to help myself with a bowl of Yoshinoya. It's quite a surprise itself that I finally got to taste this in Indonesia. I've always been wondering why Indonesians bother to form a really long line just to munch on this small-portioned beef bowl. It tastes good but it's not really my most favorite. I first recognized Yoshinoya back in US and the restaurant - I hate to say this - is only filled with a few people. Maybe that's because I live in a relatively small town with most people who are not fans of rice dishes.

(Image from http://sendokgarpu.com)

I gotta say this: Yoshinoya in Indonesia is darn good! It's actually as good as the one in US. Even better, Yoshinoya here has much cheaper price at the same portion as in US.
Before leaving, we took pictures using Carmen's iPad at...the toilet -_-

Oh dear chubby cheeks, please be thinner.
I'm going to love you even more if you do that ^^

Counting down the days

2011-09-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

HI GUYS
It's been over a month since my stay in Indonesia.

I'll be going back on the 23rd of September, which is...next week.

Happy? sad? Well, I'm in between. Happy cos...
I MISS USA.
That's true!
Here: Crossing the road is INSANE, nobody seems to care when someone you hold the door to let them to pass by, no staying up late at friends', no FREAKING FREE MINERAL WATER

But on the other hand, I know I'm going to miss a lot of things I'd encounter in Indonesia, something that even a country as great as US could never replace.

~za FOOD
Indonesian authentic food is definitely irreplaceable. There's actually an Indonesian restaurant where I live, but the price is ridiculous. But that's one thing I can tolerate cos I understand it must be hard to get those one-and-only Indonesian spices.
~za RAIN
Yeah I'm a rain person. The sound of heavy rain, the smell of acid rain (not good though), being in the car and look through the window where water's dripping down while listening to the music, and umbrellas. No matter how you think how terrible these things are, but still, nothing's going to replace rain in Indonesia
~za TV
It's a personal issue. I don't watch TV there.
~za CLIMATE
I guess now I get why Americans love going to Indonesia: cos it's a place where you don't need to bother yourself by wearing layers of outfit! Or think about what to wear on spring!
~za HOUSE
You know that song from Bolt? There is no home like the one you've got, cos that home belongs to you *tears* Quite explains everything. Last but not least...
~za ROOM
I must say I love my bed there rather than here. The blanket I have in Cupertino is totally comforting and it can even make me sleep for hours! But well, there are no rooms in the world - even though, say, I get offered a room to stay at a palace in England - that are going to replace my one and only bedroom.

I'm pretty sure there must be lots more than just 6 irreplaceable things.
Anyway, *laconic mode on* I'm off to Singapore tomorrow. I'll be back on Sunday evening and hopefully I'll get to post some more interesting stories before I go back to the US on Friday next week.

gonna miss my desk...

Room sweet room.
Take care of yourself room and the other 5 irreplaceable things. See you next year!

Yeah I'm going back to Indonesia next year.

Corner for Designers

2011-09-05T06:01:00.000-07:00

Hi all, how's your week?

I know I made an entry not so long ago. I just wanted to share what I've been up to lately. Remember I mentioned something about getting a part-time job the other day? Yep, I'm going to reveal it this time. My cousin is currently working on an online company that provides crowdsource design. It's the first in Indonesia! So it really is a hit cos my cousin gets to introduce it to Indonesian community!

Click on Sibby - Le Mascotte - above to have her take you to Sribu.com
I didn't know she was a girl till today
Sibby is designed by Renata

Flyer designed by Renata

Sribu.com (Sribu literally means "a thousand") is targeted towards companies/individuals and independent graphic designers. It works where a company or an individual acts like a client places a graphic design request in the website. Then bunch of graphic designers would submit a design according to the request in a competition format. Eventually the client gets to choose which design pleases him or her the most. The chosen design is selected as the winner of the contest and the graphic designer gets rewarded with an amount of money! Sribu pretty much acts as a mediator that connects in-needs-of-design clients and freelance designers.

Just today, I started to get active in the office. We launched the site's blog that basically provides extensive info you need in everything graphic design and decided an official name for Sribu.com fans and followers: Sribuddy. I'm honored to work as the blog's daily contributor and I'm also responsible for the blog's customization and layout.

Make sure you guys check out both Sribu.com to see what service we're offering you and Sribu's Corner to stay updated with our latest posts!

Korean Indulgence

2011-09-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I haven't tweeted anything about Kpop or Kdrama!
I'm planning to see this in the future, maybe when I get back to the US since streaming in Indonesia would be such a pain (talking about the slow connection and all).

Heartstring (Korean title: You've Fallen for me) follows the lives of two university students who major in different music genre. Their lives got intertwined in a concert. The drama stars Jung Yong Hwa and Park Shin Hye, marking the second time of their collaboration since You're Beautiful.

Yong Hwa and Shin Hye in the same project together, again, you know what that means????
Uber awesomeness... ^^

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I've been listening to some cool, new Kpop songs these days, and some of them got stuck in my mind for days.

MBLAQ - Monalisa

The guitar in the background music just...rules!
And can I just kidnap Thunder?

2PM - Hands up

Taecyeon. Nichkhun. Period...
*brb spazzing*

T-ara - Roly Poly

Here's what I like about T-ara. Their concept might be a girly but there's something that distinguishes them from SNSD. T-ara has more diverse concept in each song they have, making their song and style memorable. Last time in "Yayaya", T-ara came up with a Native American concept, and Bo Peep's theme is somehow feline-ish, cat-ish (with the whole cat dance). This time - despite the utterly long MV - T-ara emerges with a Grease-like 70s theme.

2NE1 - I am the Best

CL's "Naega jeil jal naga" lyric and her unique tone are really catchy to my ears I even instinctively sing it at some points.
Before this song, I was never a big fan of 2NE1. Thanks to I am the Best, I started to listen to all of their songs.

Last but not least....

Super Junior - Mr Simple

Gee, I'm biased, aren't I?
I know that.

Jakarta Pt 4: Evening Snack

2011-09-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

The second weekend wasn't as busy as last week. I hung out with Eileena, Bella, and Nancy to Grand Indonesia. We pretty much just walked around like most teenage girls would do in the mall, stopped by at some shops whose items caught our attention even though we ended up not buying anything.

However, the highlight of the event itself lies on the early dinner we had. Considering it was fasting month and my friends kindly intended to dine by the time I broke my fasting, we decided to have early dinner at around break fasting time.

Waraku is the restaurant we picked, which is popular with its large size of noodle served in an enormous bowl. We were quite in the mood to have some Japanese dining so Waraku would be the best choice as it's hardly in any other malls in Jakarta.
It was weird how I wasn't so hungry that day. I even skipped a few minutes late for the break fasting moments. Here's what I had.

Picture credit to: http://www.koprol.com/places/16751

The picture doesn't show the exact food that I had, but I just wanted to give you the idea on how big the bowl really was. It was literally big. The biggest bowl you might ever see lying there on your dining table. Probably as big as a sink. The portion itself isn't as big as I thought it'd be. But the size of the bowl is extremely overwhelming.

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On Saturday still on the same week, in the morning, I had a staff meeting at Sarinah with fellow coworkers from a crowd-source online company I'm working in. The meeting ended later than expected, while I was having only two hours to rest before taking off to Taman Anggrek to meet up with Thalia and Lala. It marks the second time of my visit to the mall since last week with Eileena and Bella.

There were originally going to be three more people to join the day with Thalia, Lala, and me, but unfortunately they couldn't make it there.
Lala, Thalia, and I were planning to ice-skate, but it was closed due to cleaning before we could even reach there. The cleaning process took more than an hour meanwhile we were supposed to be having dinner an hour later.

Then, there seemed to be a problem with Thalia that we needed to help her solving it. It was actually easy, but the whole procedure made it more complicated. Thank goodness we were able to finish everything off before dinner time.

Doesn't the sushi tempt you?
Lala had it for her dinner, and she said the sushi was the best in the mall. I got to try that next time.

We couldn't hang out any longer since we needed to go. It might be a short hang-out but fun enough! I'm really sad Lala couldn't manage to meet me and Thalia anymore, since she had flown back to Beijing :(. We were planning to meet up again on Eid holiday, but seems family plans on holiday had kept us all from getting together. Schedule was pretty tough! ><

That's it I got for today. It might be a considerably short post with many pictures, but I'm going to keep posting some more soon!

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I'm currently customizing the blog and focusing particularly on the blogroll list. Since the link list keeps expanding, I'm planning to replace the blogroll format more with a link list to make it look less cluttered. Hope it'll be done pretty soon!

If you haven't noticed, I added a feature for you site owners and bloggers to plug your site to my blog. It's pretty easy, cos all you need to do is just fill out the form. Then I'll be more than glad to put up your link!

Jakarta Pt 3: Eid Mubarak!

2011-08-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

Before beginning the post, I just want to say...

I really hope I can replace that cake vector with a ketupat one.
But yay, last night, I worked my butt off on designing this cake in Illustrator following this tutorial on Youtube. This artwork marks my very first vector made in Illustrator! (Yeah, I'm more a Photoshop person).

Anyway yesterday is surely one of the most blessed day for all Moslems in the world. Eid Mubarak finally concluded Ramadhan month this year.
Our Eid tradition hasn't changed for years! After Eid prayer, my parents and I took off to my grandma's house for what was supposed to be family gathering.

However, turned out that only my family present in the simple event. My extended family members had reportedly paid a visit yesterday, since they celebrated Eid yesterday. Actually, I'm pretty disappointed with this year's government's act in deciding Eid Mubarak day cos it supposedly fell on August 30, 2011, but for some lunar factor, it was slated to the day after.

Apparently it ended up causing a major confusion in Indonesian society. As a result to this, some people celebrated Eid still on August 30 and some - like most people and my family - followed government's regulation which is the day after.

So you see how the whole slating-Eid issue kinda lessened the participants of the social gathering event in my supposedly-big family.
Despite lacking of guests for this year's social gathering event, it didn't reduce my Eid spirit!

Sad news regarding the Ketupat: they only lasted two days before decaying. Good thing my family still had lontong as an alternative to be served to the guests cos this food actually lasted longer.

Nothing beat the lusciousness of authentic Eid food served by my aunt and grandma!

Spotted! A tissue box camouflaging as a blackforest cake! Darn, this thing is undeniably distracting! My cousin and I nearly thought of it as a real cake. She even told me how this thing was soooo tempting to look at during fasting days.

This artwork is made by my aunt. See how her talent is dangerously mesmerizing!

It was a small celebration compared to one of those social gatherings you might even step your foot in. But I love the warm atmosphere and how I surprisingly spent nearly hours chit chatting with my grandma, cousin, and aunt.

That same evening, my family returned home to welcome my friend's parents who came over to have a bite of our still-edible ketupat (apparently it wasn't on its decaying phase just yet). Just today, we had some more guests coming in!

Guess this year's Eid wasn't so disappointing at all.

Signature Testing

2011-08-30T02:09:00.001-07:00

Hello, just want to have a quick post.
I'll be adding a signature at the bottom of each post.

Hope it's going to work out for the rest of the post, and I hope you like it too.

Jakarta Pt 2: Beyond the Sea

2011-08-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

More fun stories coming up now!
On Friday, on the first week of my vacation in Indonesia, I went out with Fany, Agnes, Monica, Widya, and Carmen to Plaza Semanggi. We had lunch together at its food court. It feels amazing to finally meet my best high school friends, got together, and shared our college experience. Even though my other friends go to different unis here in Jakarta, I can tell each of their uni has slightly different systems. But one unique thing I learn is that the Indonesian uni system and US college system aren't much different!

Anyway, here are some pictures I took. My friends haven't really much changed since high school!

I also gave away some souvenirs from the States for my friends. Don't judge them by the size, I know they're small, but these small hand sanitizers have made themselves quite a trend in the US! (sorta)

And they're cute too!

Afterwards, we decided we'd see Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon. Actually I've seen it once in the US, but it wouldn't bother me if I saw it for the second time. Although I'm not really a fan of these robots, I was quite mesmerized with the whole effect, which made me agree on the decision of watching it for the second time.

Excuse the blurry image. The lighting kinda sucks.

It seems like it's been forever since I saw a subtitled movie. It took me a moment that I was not in AMC, but in 21. Movies here are certainly subtitled. I'm really relieved by the fact that Indonesian government started releasing Hollywood movies again after several months of disbandment. The release of Harry Potter 7 Part 2, Transformers 3, Kungfu Panda 2, and Fast Five definitely make a good sign (and doesn't anyone realize they're all sequels?)

Well, moving on to Saturday still on the same week. Another reunion with my college friends was on the go, and this time, it'd take place in Seaworld, Ancol. I was psyched, since it certainly sounds better than going to Dufan (I'm not a fan of theme parks with many thrill rides). Unlike the other day, more friends were coming this time!

I went to Nancy's hotel to pick her up. Her hotel isn't located really far from Ancol. Only a couple of minutes away. Then we were off to Seaworld.

Before we entered the aquarium, we found a nice food court located just at its lobby. We decided to chill for a moment while waiting for our other friends to come. I made friends with Aymee's schoolmates who happened to be there as well: TM, her brother, and Joven.

After everyone was there, we entered the Seaworld at last. FYI, I went to another aquarium in less than a month, only the other one that I visited is in Monterey Bay. You know, that infamous Monterey Bay aquarium. I gotta say that aquarium is much larger than Seaworld. Seaworld's concept is more like putting every tank inside one big dark hall. Monterey Bay provides more rooms to display tanks.

Anyway, it doesn't eliminate the fact that Seaworld Indonesia isn't as good as Monterey. I love the fact that Seaworld Indonesia has bigger fish to display (even mammals), like Dugong, shark, and basically large sized beings that will make you drop your jaw in an instant. I don't recall Monterey having large sized fish.

We found Nemo!

Dugong. Probably the largest being and the only mammal we found in Seaworld.

Fresh water fish.

Some amphibians spotted in the site.

Darn, this dude is HUGE!

Then another thing I love about Seaworld Indonesia: they have underwater tunnel!
Unfortunately, most of the pictures taken in the undersea tunnel lacks of quality. The lighting doesn't provide much to produce high quality pictures. So I could only post some of the best ones taken inside.

Stingray found lying on the sand

Uh, I don't know whether it's the fish's real face or some kind of features that resemble face.

I honestly love the picture below, since it's actually the best yet high quality picture I took. Tony's expression reminds me of the song "Part of Your World". It's like he's dreaming to be part of...well...his surrounding.

It was a short visit, but the day was still young. We got out at around 2, had a brief visit to the Gift Shop, and we took off to find a nearby restaurant to have lunch.
Before that, some of my friends passed an ice cream stall and bought some ice cream. Nice to munch on in such a hot day.

We had lunch at Le Bridge. The place was hard to notice, since it turns out to be located far off the coast on a pier. So we had to cross a bridge to the pier across the beach where the restaurant exists.

The view in the bridge isn't so bad at all! It must also be a very rare moment for Jakarta people like me and my friends to take a look at the sea located in our city.

Later on, we returned to Seaworld where TM, her brother, Joven, and Aymee would be picked up. Before parting, we took some pictures. Some appeared to be very hilarious. The picture below is one of those some hilarious pictures. But way to go, boys! You guys show some high respect towards our country!

Last but not least, a group picture was finally taken.

It was a pleasant day! Nancy and I returned to her hotel where my parents had already waited at the lobby. Since it was already dinner time, we stopped by at an authentic seafood restaurant in Pecenongan area.

Bongcheondong’s Ghost

2011-08-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

Aymee sent me this link yesterday. At a glimpse, I see the link she sent me contains a web comic strip written in Korean. But Aymee said said. "Just scroll down! Keep scrolling! Don't mind the language, just keep scrolling!" At the same time, another friend of mine knew that Aymee sent me that link. He chatted with me and said "Don't open it!"

But well, I'm a cat, and I feel curiosity was slowly killing me...
And it indeed scared the poo out of me!!!!

Anyway, a bit about the plot. The short comic "Bongcheondong's Ghost (봉천동 귀신)" is based on a local urban legend. It basically tells about a girl seemingly walking back home late at night when she suddenly bumped into a limping woman.
I won't spoil anything here. You need to figure out yourself to see what I'm talking about.

Open if you dare

New Look!

2011-08-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hey all!
See something different here? Yeah, maybe you've seen it up for a while. But yeah, finally, it's good to announce that...

We have a new look!

Getting out of the pink area! Yay!

I like summer-y color these days and I think it would be great to use them for my new theme. It also kinda shows that I've been into a combination colors of pastel pink, blue, green, and yellow/cream. These days, I also fall in love with stripes, which might explain why I have that up for the background.

I finished messing up around with the banner. As you can see, I first used a not-so-good yet temporary banner, but I thought putting up just a typography for a banner would suit just fine.

Well, I hope you like the new theme.
Anyway, I've got something for you guys. Out of the blue.

It's just some discussion I had with four of my friends on Facebook. We talked about a particular picture (a dream room for four of us) but ended up having 1,013 comments!

Have a great day!

Jakarta Pt 1: Coffee and Ice

2011-08-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

Three weeks have passed so quickly in Indonesia, and I already miss Cupertino. Well, or at least I miss some aspects of it. Anyway, the day after my arrival, I attempted to make myself busy. That Monday, August 8, I took a rest in the morning to assure whether I had coped with the jetlag. A bit sleepy, still, but the jetlag itself wasn't as bad as I thought. Later in the afternoon, when I started to feel a little bored, I tweeted my friend Carmen and asked whether she was free, which she really was!

So we quickly arranged to meet up at PIM later that afternoon. It was going to be my first hang-out with friend after arriving in Indonesia! So you can imagine how excited I was.

Basically what we did was we chatted a little in Starbucks, went to Timezone, and got ourselves soaked in sweat through many rounds of Dance Dance Revolution. Her skills definitely have exceeded mine! We went through several DDR rounds before we really were worn out, especially I haven't played it in a while.
Then we went to Ya Kun Kaya Toast to have a cup of tea. Actually, I only accompanied her sipping the tea, since I was fasting.

Then we took some pictures using her Photobooth. I quite love the additional effects installed in her app. It got some cool effects my Photobooth doesn't even have.

Afterwards, we parted and I headed to Bakmi Gajah Mada to meet up with my parents for break fasting. Here comes one of my most anticipated moments in Indonesia: tasting the famous chicken noodle! FYI, Bakmi Gajah Mada - or often abbreviated as Bakmi GM - is often listed under the wishlist of most Indonesian students abroad as their reason to come back to their home country *biased*. The noodle is so famous we Indonesians even talk about it in the States!

Teh Botol!
How I miss this local Jasmine Tea.
I've drunk teh botol in the US before, but isn't it just amazing to have encountered with the bottled one? I mean, it's just unbelievable (excuse my spazz over food. It happens all the time)

ALL HAIL THE CHICKEN NOODLE!
Minus the fried wonton. Not a really big fan of it.

The day after, I hung out with Aymee, Ardy, and Andy in Karawaci. FYI, they're actually my friends back in the US, but we just happened to be in Indonesia, so why not having a reunion? Besides, we wanted to feel the sensation of hanging out in Indonesia (cos we hung out a lot back in the States).

Aymee and I particularly made friends with Andy and Ardy's colleagues: Patricia and Agung. We got along very well, especially Patricia is a big fan of Kpop and Kdrama. So we shared our interests at some point. She also recommended me some good Thai movies, which I became completely drawn to. We basically spent the whole day strolling in Supermall Karawaci, touring Universitas Pelita Harapan, and ended up chilling out in its comfortable lounge.

Two days after, Eileena and Bella - also my friends in the US - invited me to hang out with them in Taman Anggrek Mall. This time, we weren't just strolling around and doing basic mall stuff (read=shopping). We were going to do something a bit extraordinary that day, which was ice skating!

Whoops!
I'm not a good skater, considering I haven't ice skated since I was like eight. I remembered being so good in it, but apparently not anymore. So yeah, I'm back being a rookie.

There's actually a very fun moment during ice skating, and quite shocking too. When I was leaning on the glass in the ice rink (as you can see in the picture above), I spotted someone waving at me. LITERALLY. Bella and Eileena went over and waved to that guy. Apparently, it turns out to be my art history classmate in the States!
He's also Indonesian, of course, but isn't it just unexpected to bump into him in Indonesia? Too bad the sound proof glass didn't allow us to have longer interaction. We basically just did body gestures to communicate, then he passed by.

What a small world it is, isn't it?

Later on, we bumped into this photo studio, which we decided to give it a try. The results aren't so bad at all. In fact, I really like how they turn out to be. Here are the two best ones.

The props rock, don't they? Or is it just me?
The backgrounds are also quite neat. I love them.
Yes, please excuse the narcissism.

FAIL XD
Err...I'm not so sure about this one. We weren't sorta ready with the second shoot, and before we got to pose, the camera captured us. Guess whose hands are on the backgrounds.

We called it a day by having dinner in Hachi Hachi, near the ice rink. I had a bowl of Nabeyaki Udon while Bella and Eileena munched on sushi.

One more thing to conclude the post. I know it's totally off topic.

NASI PADANG!!!
Yeah I had this with my dad to break our fast in PIM. One of the food listed under my wishlist after Bakmi GM.
Nom nom.

I am HOME.

2011-08-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Heylow!
I AM IN INDONESIA!

Yes, I'm finally able to post from my home country. I skipped posting last time I went back here.
Ah, the joy of homecoming. Never knew it would be this overwhelming.

So you ask, when did I arrive here? I arrived here exactly a week ago, on August 7, 2011. That date also marks the anniversary of my departure to US. Wow, time does fly so fast, doesn't it?

Okay, story time. I promise I'm going to make it short, or at least...shorter than any other of my stories.

Days prior to my departure back to Indonesia had been sleepless times. Thing is, I barely had time to pack due to finals, and finals themselves took place right two days before my departure. So you can imagine days before finals, I put on my all-nighter instead of packing.

Packing itself was quite hectic. I technically only had a day to pack and I basically just threw unused clothes and whatever I thought would be useful to use in Indonesia into my 100x90 meters suitcase.

This might explain why I didn't get to take pictures during packing.

In the evening of August 5, 2011, I did final checking on my stuff right after going to Valley Fair to buy some additional souvenirs with Tony and Aymee (not to mention, having late lunch at Cheesecake Factory). While Elda and I were doing final checking, Tony, Aymee, Nancy, and Ray came over to bid me and Elda farewell, since they wouldn't be able to take me to SFO. Instead, Kathleen and William were going to take both Elda and me to SFO. I thanked Tony, Nancy, Aymee, and Ray for loading Elda's and my heavy loads to Kathleen's petite car.

Our flight was at 1.40 am on August 6, 2011 and we departed from the apartment at around 10pm. Since the traffic to the airport wouldn't be stagnant, we dropped by airport's nearby In-N-Out Burger to have ourselves midnight snacks. We bumped into another party: Amira (who was going home as well) along with Joshine and Kezia.

I was a bit worried that we would be late for our flight, but my friends assured me that In-n-Out wasn't so far from SFO. Instead, "It only takes 5 minutes to get there," said William.

At the airport, Kathleen accompanied me and Elda to check in and afterwards, we stumbled upon another Indonesian party and took a picture together (which sadly I don't have). Then Elda and I took off together to the gate.

There was a funny thing happening when I passed the custom. The custom officer checked on my photo ID on passport and looked at me at the same time for validity. Then she smiled and said. "You don't change at all." I burst laughing at her response, seeing that my passport was updated three years ago.

Then, we entered the plane from the same gate my flight was back in December 2010. On the plane, I sat between Elda and long, blonde-haired guy at the window. Things went just fine at first. Elda and I occupied ourselves with a movie (Water for Elephants) played far ahead on TV in the middle of the cabin, cos there were no TVs installed in each seat.

But it wasn't until the blonde guy next to me, poked me and had a conversation with me. At first, I was okay and kept responding to him as form of manner, yet I was annoyed with the fact that I was obviously seen wearing earphones and concentrating myself on the movie when he started the conversation (Dude, I need some privacy)

Then he started to drone on and on and jumped from one topic to another. He even started talking about nonsense in an exuberant way (like humanity, philosophical stuff, even monkeys, chemistry, you know...stuff people surely don't want to hear for light conversation). I felt like I was in some sort of a class, listening to a boring lecture. I gripped onto Elda's hand as a sign for her to distract me, which she did. Elda saved me by quickly talking to me about a scene she was watching at that moment, abruptly stopping the guy from continuing his gibberish talk to me.

Anyway, in Taipei for transit, I had myself a bowl of hot beef noodle for breakfast (It was 7 am and I still had an hour before boarding).
Once we got into the gate, we took some pictures using my laptop...just to kill time.

The flight was relatively shorter than the one from San Francisco to Taipei (although it was delayed for half an hour). Good thing the seats in the flight to Jakarta were equipped with personal entertainment unlike on the plane to Taipei. On board, I decided to see Thor and Kungfu Panda 2, this time, nobody interrupted my movie time.

At around 2.30-ish pm, Elda and I walked out to the arrival hall and greeted our parents.

Excuse my face. But you can see it's a mixture of excitement and exhaustion.

My dad excused himself for driving in the wrong side of the road, which I responded it truly as a joke. I needed to get my sight adjusted to Jakarta scenery after 8 months. Okay, call 8 months a freaking short time. But really, the toxic polluted stench, motorcycles stealing lanes, traffic jams, such things don't even exist in the States! I wonder what would happen to me if I stayed longer in the States, say like a year before coming back now, I would have most likely got a mini heart attack seeing all of these Jakarta mess.

Anywaaaay....I forgot one little tiny detail. It was fasting month, and when my dad asked me what was the first thing I wanted to do that day, I instinctively said: EAT.
For your info, it was freaking 3 pm, three hours before it's time to break the fast. Temptation lures. But my dad just said, "Okay, I'll take you home first cos we've prepared something for you."

And this is what he's talking about:

TA-DAAA. Presenting you, the holy traditional rawon soup!
This is officially the first meal I munched in Indonesia.
Nothing beats the lusciousness of homemade food, served yours truly on the plate and bowl I had longed to use, freshly cooked out of the pot. Really. I cooked stuff like this in States and it didn't even taste the same, plus I'm a horrible cook.

My dad and mom - who were fasting - just sat across the table and saw me munch on this delicacy.

I super duper missed this orange juice. Period. Nothing better to describe my love to this brand of OJ.

I took a short tour around the house just to make sure I didn't forget the layout of the house. There were some minor changes. Some furniture got moved, removed, added, and so on. And on to the most awaited moment.

Voila! C'est ma chambre!

At last! I miss it so much! Everything's still the same for my room, except my bookshelf has been moved downstairs to provide more space.

I didn't spend much time at home and we departed shortly to Pondok Indah Mall to take a stroll with my family, also as an attempt to reduce my jetlag (by keeping me awake).
Anyway, I took some nice shots using my dad's SLR camera. Oh oh, I felt so pro!

PIM has had a lot of changes! They have this new huge restaurant/food court section in the back of the mall.

Even I was so surprised they have Yoshinoya here! And it's pretty packed of people. Guess I need to give it a try though I live pretty close to one back in States.

We were at first trying to look for a place to break my parents' fast. But considering it was Sunday, all the restaurants and seats were fully booked that we decided to go home.

Well, so that basically wraps my August 7, 2011, the day of my arrival in Jakarta. So far, I had been busy for the whole first week in Indonesia, with friends asking me to go out, doctor's appointment, etc. I barely have a day to stay at home all day long. However, today, I decided to take a break for a day. It's good to stay at home after going out so often.

I might not continue relaxing for the rest of my summer in Indonesia. I might work part-time at my cousin's design firm or do something else that is worthy but not energy-wasting (It's summer! Time to relax your tense muscles before getting back to those thick textbooks!)

I remember that I once said I wasn't really excited about going home, particularly because some of my friends I like to hang out with, will study abroad this year. But when I stepped my foot to the messy Jakarta, I never knew I would miss this atmosphere. No matter how miserable the city is compared to Cupertino.

Have a great summer! I'll keep you guys posted! :)

Overheard on the weekend

2011-07-30T23:24:00.000-07:00

Just some quotes overheard lately which I hoped would make you laugh your ass off as well (well, not that much though).

Conversation between me and my dad over Skype:

Me: "How will I be able to see the pictures from yesterday's event?"
Dad: "Hold on for a second, I'm tagging you on them (on Facebook) now." *pauses* "Wait, what's your name again?"

(My dad's possibly having trouble looking for my full name in order to tag me on those pics)
OMG, my dad forgot his own daughter's name T_T

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Random conversation among me and 3 of my friends during playing a race game on PS.
2 of my friends are Indonesians, another one is a Malay.

Everyone: *hands on joysticks, eyes on the screen*
Friend #1 (She's Indonesian): innocently "Hey, you know what? Another Indonesian classmate introduced this Malay word to me in the class."
Friend #2 (He's Malay): "What is it?"
Friend #1: "Rumah Sakit Korban Lelaki." (literally means "Hospital for the Victims of Men", but it actually means "Maternity Hospital". Quite ironic, eh?)

*awkward pause, suddenly...*

Me and another Indonesian friend (Friend #3): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

Me: *to Friend #2* "Is it really how you say it in Malay?"
Friend #2: *slightly embarrassed, I can tell* "Yes, it's actually true, or Klinik Ibu dan Anak (Mother and Child Clinic). How do you say that in Indonesian?"
Me: "We call it 'Rumah Sakit Bersalin'."
Friend #1: "But the Malay word for it makes an impression as if the guys there (in Malaysia) are all bad."
Everyone else: .....

If you don't know about this "joke", that's because it actually isn't a joke. It's true that Maternity Hospital is called...that...in Malay (I just double-checked it to Friend #2, to make sure that the Malay word for it isn't merely something made up by Indonesian people). So it's more like British people have "rubbish" and Americans have "garbage".

It's just that the phrase actually sounds funny to Indonesians. Since especially Indonesian people grow resent towards Malay since Malay people are said to have adopted and claimed Indonesian culture as theirs), it has become a joke among Indonesian people.

But really, no offense on me bringing up about this "joke". The "joke" here actually lies on the fact that me and Friend #3 have certainly heard about this "joke" back in our home country as something we talk to our fellow Indonesians (local joke), but we never expected we would hear this "joke" brought up in the presence of a real Malay person.

I feel a bit bad to that guy though, but good thing his reaction is cool and okay towards it.

And no, despite the commotion between Indonesians and Malays these days (due to the cultural conflict), my Indonesian friends and I never develop this hatred feeling towards our Malay friend. We even act as if such a thing never exists!
So let there be peace between us!!! :)

Trying out some LOOKS

2011-07-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

This weekend I've been experimenting a lot on various looks on Looklet. Let's see what we got here.

V-Day
I guess it's supposed to be V-J-day, the day when Americans won the World War II over Japan. Anyway, this picture is inspired mostly by 40s style and the background is based on New York.

Soo Young's Run Devil Run
I always adore Soo Young's look in Run Devil Run. Somehow her look stands out among other Girl's Generation, maybe because she manages to look more tomboyish than others, yet still chic! Her hairstyle rocks too!

Tell me your wish
A look inspired by Girl's Generation costume in "Genie/Tell me your wish". Maybe the look above is closer to Jessica's than other members, seeing the model dons blonde hair. Anyway, I'm loving the white blazer and especially the policeman's cap! Although in some versions of Genie promo pictures, the girls wear black shorts instead of white, oh well.

Belle Epoque
A tres chic look inspired by Edwardian era and also a minor character in the novel, The Nightlurker. I was thinking the look above to fit either the male character's older sister or past lover. One thing for sure, the vintage umbrella completes the flawlessness!

Don't talk to strangers!
I actually thought to design a look for my other in-progress novel's female protagonist, where she travels to Korea and goes on an up-and-down adventure. I've always imagined her being averagely stylish yet simple at the same time. At first, I thought it'd be a good idea to don her stylish, sophisticated winter outfit like the ones in Gossip Girl (cape, trench coat), but apparently those kinds of clothing just don't work for adventure stories' characters, so I chose simpler yet easy-to-move-around outfit. The highlight of the style is the UGG boots. Love'em to bits!

Scottish Moorland
This feminine look is inspired by the female protagonist on my novel, The Nightlurker. The character herself is not a girly person, but rather tomboyish at some points. The overall sweet and simple clothing was donned when her boyfriend took her out to a meadow for a date, and then she decided to impress him by wearing something that would capture his attention.

Black Widow
Has anyone seen Iron Man 2? I actually haven't seen it before but I really adore a character there called Black Widow, a Russian spy played by the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson. I believe the whole latex catsuit costume is also highly influenced by Catwoman too. I wish Looklet added extra props like grenades, guns, bombs to be placed in her hands, just to add more sense of her as a spy. :)

Be sure to stick around! I might post some more looks this weekend, or otherwise, I'll be definitely posting something even more exciting. Just stay tuned!

Thank you Harry Potter

2011-07-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

It's so sad that the most acclaimed saga of the decade has finally come to its end this year.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Potter fans will finally be able to catch the last glimpse of the-boy-who-lived's adventure through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

I got the chance to see the movie last week with Eileena, Bella, Jennifer, Bianca, and Hanson on Sunday, July 17, two days after the release day. At first, I was so nervous for not getting the tickets seeing the movie was highly anticipated by Potter fans, but we finally got them through pre-order process.

Anyway, let's just get on to the movie. You may want to watch out for spoilers if you haven't seen it yet.

The movie basically is a continuation of the previous one released on November 2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1. Basically, the movie is obviously based on the book. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a whole tells about Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) going on an adventure to seek Lord Voldemort's (Ralph Fiennes) Horcruxes (sacred items where Voldemort keeps his souls). The goal is to destroy the Horcruxes one by one in order to put Voldemort's immortal life come to its end. But finding them isn't easy because aside Harry, Hermione, and Ron need to go to unexpected various places in the magic world, they are aware that Voldemort is watching over them and trying to fail their mission by sending his minions, the Death Eaters. Harry also aims to discover his faith and the truth about the past he has never known before.

I gotta say Part 1 was a little disappointing. Maybe that's because I'm not getting used to seeing movies that are cut off in the middle of the complication, thus we all have to wait for the latter portion of the movie several months ahead. I was a little nervous to see if the latter part of the movie will be as promising as most people say. Like everyone else, I wanted the final movie of the most intriguing saga of the decade to be brilliant. But in the end, all of my anxiety was answered positively.

Part 2 was absolutely, definitely intricate. I couldn't get more satisfied. All Potter fans are surely aware that Potter movies have got darker and darker each movie. As the final installment, you can guess that this movie is the darkest among the whole saga.

I read the novel, it's just that I forgot some parts of it because I only read it once and it was back the time when it was newly published. I'm pretty sure everything matches with the book, with some tiny parts that are cut off in the movie. The producers somehow try to fit all important details in the book to the movie that they want audience not to miss out (which leads to the movie being split up into two parts), and that's a good attempt. The several months of wait for the latter portion of the movie isn't wasteful.

*spoilers* Well, I gotta say the seventh movie is full of action and surprising scenes which won't fail to amuse the audience. One of my favorite scenes would be when Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) bravely stepped forward to Voldemort's presence and brought up a heartfelt speech, saying no matter that Harry has died, "he still lives among us."

The Battle of Hogwarts was also one of the tensest moments during the movie. The sense of unity among the wizards is strongly felt during the time where Hogwarts staff and Order of the Phoenix collaborated their power to create a shield to protect Hogwarts castle from Death Eaters' attack.

The latter portion of the movie resembles a war/disaster movie than the previous Harry Potter movies I knew before, seeing wizards and witches who were dying and injured due to the battle, lay on the stretchers in a Great turn-to-barrack Hall. The scene where Fred Weasley died as he was surrounded by his family, wasn't depicted to the fullest. Fred is one of the most important and loved Potter character and I guess, the director needs to include the scene how he died to add more emotional effect on the audience. But anyway, I definitely love the part where Molly Weasley bravely duelled with Bellatrix Lestrange and eventually killed her by dissolving into pieces.

Not to mention, one of the most awaited scenes in the whole Part 2 movie is, of course, the 19 Years Later scene. Audience have surely anticipated whether Warner Bros decided to replace the current actors with older ones. However, much to our surprise, the 30-something-year-old Potter and friends are still portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Tom Felton, Bonnie Wright, and Rupert Grint!

You might wonder how could the teenage cast of Potter and friends portray the much older ones. Well, the make-up artists did all the job. They attempted to make Potter and friends as adult looking as possible.

Apparently, the make-up and appearance effect work out to all Daniel, Tom, Bonnie, and Rupert, except for Emma. Despite donning a mature trench coat, hand bag, and a hairstyle that hardly changes. No matter how they're trying to make Emma look out, it just doesn't work on her. She still looks slightly older than her age, and even everyone seems to agree that she acts more like a sister to "her" daughter, Rose.

Overall, the 19 Years Later scene is a scene where all Potter fans can reminisce back to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone scene where Harry first boarded the train to Hogwarts. When I saw the scene, I felt dejavu and I felt like rewatching the Sorcerer Stone except the fact that it wasn't Harry who boarded the train, but his children instead.

This is where another favorite moment of the movie occurred. Little Albus Severus, Harry's son, doubted about the thought of getting selected to Slytherin, to which the adult Harry responded that his son name was named after the "two headmasters of Hogwarts." Actually when the audience are exposed to the adult Potter characters, I could hear a couple of giggles and gasps all over the cinema referring to the jaw-dropping make-up effects done on Potter casts, not to mention Daniel's wise, fatherly tone when he spoke to "his" son. Good thing he really pulled it off. *spoilers*

Wow that's long...
The most impressive aspect of this part 2 is, it features a lot of flashbacks from the previous movies, especially the movie makes a lot of references to the very first movie. We all remember Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone (the first installment) as heart-lightening without any dark elements. It's simply a movie for children and family.

But along the time, Harry Potter movies just got darker and more serious as the stories were altering and the characters were growing up. Watching Part 2 would be a great opportunity for Potter fans to reminisce to the very first movie. In Part 2 movie, we can all catch a few glimpses of elements featured in the first movie, such as the original Harry Potter theme song that gradually ceased in each movie, but in most of Part 2 movie, you'll get to hear lots of Harry Potter original theme song that most Potter fans have longed to hear since the early movies.

Visual Effects are no doubt anymore. Harry Potter series are popularly known for the amazing effects and gigantic set. The effect producers really pull it off in the last installment.

Overall, Part 2 is the most emotional Potter movie that successfully paralyzed me on my seat. It successfully captured all audience's emotion too, I believe. Thus, I give it rating:

10/10

Enough with the review and spoilers. Now, it's time for some random movie-off-topic time.
Shortly after the movie was done, Eileena, Jennifer, Bella, and I took some pictures in the...well...you know where girls these days like to take pictures while hanging out right? ^^

From left to right: Bella, Eileena, me, and Jennifer

We're not posing Glee's sign. But it's "7" instead, as in the Harry Potter 7.

Anyway, I'm so satisfied and sad at the same time. Satisfied because the final movie was beyond awesome, and sad because it concludes the whole chapters of Harry Potter movie series. I didn't go all emotional, sad, shedding tears after the movie finished, like some of people I heard. But you know the feeling when the saga you grow up with finally has to come to its end.

Oh well...

Thank you so much Harry Potter, for the wonderful 10 years.
Here's a bit of not-really-an-artwork collage of mine dedicated to Harry Potter saga.

“Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.” - JK Rowling.

Return of the Superior

2011-07-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

Got the news that Super Junior's 5 jib is coming out real soon on August with the theme: Return of the Superior.

Wow, it looks so colorful by the way.

I'm both happy and sad at the same time for some reasons. Some people say that this is going to be the last album of Super Junior, since Leeteuk and Heechul will be enlisted to military for 2 years. Also, some people relate this issue to the so-called 5 -year-curse (where idol groups call off their career/experience some serious issues with the agency after 5 years since their debut). It happened to DBSK a few years ago, Shinhwa, SS501, HOT, and some other idol groups.

Anyway, it's just a myth - hopefully. On the other hand, as an ELF, I'm very thrilled and excited to welcome them back, especially the concept of their album and how their MV turns out to be really brings chills to me. It also delivers me some memories from last year when they released 4-jib - Bonamana. The hysteria and euphoria were just unforgettable (haha, I remember the moment where my friends and I in different places refresh SM Youtube channel seconds before the MV was finally released there). Hopefully this year's 5 jib will bring the same atmosphere.

Kibum was informed to rejoin Super Junior activities, but apparently the news won't come true. This picture might explain why.

Kibum wasn't included in the formation.
Aw, I really remember those 3 jib (Sorry Sorry + Neorago) era where Super Junior was still in complete 13-member formation, it was before Kangin was enlisted to military, Hangeng left SM, and Kibum went MIA to pursue acting career.

Too bad that the preorder of 5 jib was closed everywhere. I'm still trying to look for access and possibilities where I can preorder it.

슈퍼주니어 화이팅!

Some goodies from Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan

2011-07-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as you might have noticed, I posted an entry about reunions that came after Taiwan events. It seems like I've posted too many text-heavy stories that this blog kinda lacks of pictures. Well then, this time, I promise I'm just going to post bunch of pictures with captions, more like a gallery-like post. Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan program, which was held exactly last year, left me and my friends with several items we brought home that wouldn't make us forget our moments spent in Taiwan.

These pictures are courtesy of Sonya, who's kindly given me a permission to post these pictures taken from her camera to my blog. Thank you so much Sonya!

Hope you enjoy it, readers!

Note: some pictures might have been posted before, just so you know.
Also, since most of our members put a lot of interest on cute stuff and accessories, there are some stuff bearing excessive cuteness below. You have been warned ;)

Holy crap, there's a lot!!

Item: Uniform Backpack
Place: Tamsui Street
Description: The picture above is a backpack belongs to Sonya. Mine's color is hot pink. All girls in Group 4 bought the same style of backpacks in the same shop at the same place, only in different colors. The idea of buying the backpack was first initiated with only a handful of girls, who apparently were in needs of backpacks (since their luggage seemed to have overloaded). We all promised to use the backpacks on our departure day to Jakarta.

Item: Doraemon bread
Place: Taipei Hero House
Description: This bread is included in our breakfast' package provided in Taipei Hero House! It's actually a plain bread, but it's terrifyingly delicious! :p

Item: Sushi sets for lunch
Place: Taipei 101
Description: On the first free Sunday we had, we all strolled to Taipei 101. It was raining heavily and we were kinda lost in a secluded area in Taipei 101 building (some sort of a basement of a building interconnected to the main Taipei 101 building). Since it was lunch time and there were no food courts seen nearby, we bumped into this sushi restaurant and had some!

Item: A glass of orange juice and a glass of...fried rice for breakfast
Place: Bus taking off from Taichung hotel
Description: People make mistakes, unexceptionally being late. It seems that the members of group 4 have developed high tolerance towards each other, that even we voluntarily shoved some orange juice and fried rice to these plastic glasses, spared them to those who woke up late (the later you woke up, the less food there would be). Pretty efficient, right?

Item: Rows of unique-packaged looking candies
Place: A candy shop at Taichung downtown
Description: Just some snacks and candies we happened to see in a cute-themed candy shop at Taichung downtown

Item: Group 4 Official Flag
Place: Taichung Hotel
Description: This flag was made on our first day in Taichung. Each group was expected to come up with a concept about the flag and spill it out on a large piece of cloth. The group flag had to be made as creative and unique as we could. Our group's artist - Marcella - immediately took her time to draw our fu dao yuans (group advisors): and Xiao Xin and Xi Bao. Xiao Xin was depicted as Shinchan (probably due to bearing striking resemblance) slipping on a piece of banana peel, with Xi Bao crying out to warn him.

Item: Fujifilm Choco Polaroid
Place: Camera District, Taipei
Description: Some people from our group, like Jeje and Janet duizhang, bought these lovely polaroid cameras!

Item: Cellphone pockets
Place: Xi Men Ding night market, Taipei
Description: All members of Group 4 were very tempted to buy these for souvenirs for friends at home, which we eventually did! (after a series of bargaining)

Item: Sophie Chocolate
Place: A candy shop at Taichung downtown
Description: THIS IS NOT A PAD. I thought it was a pad that happened to be misplaced in a candy shop, but then it was a yummy chocolate! LOL at that awkward moment when grabbing a piece of chocolate out of a pad package.

Item: Candy Sticks
Place: A candy shop at Taichung downtown
Description: I didn't consume this one, but it's pretty popular among our group members as these sticks were passed around for everyone to eat.

Item: OK Chocolate
Place: A candy shop at Taichung downtown
Description: THIS IS NOT A BANDAGE. Same case as the "pad" chocolate. Inside this package is not real bandages, but instead bandage-shaped milk chocolate!

Item: Geta (Japanese Wooden Sandals)
Place: Lu Gang Street, Kaohsiung
Description: Sonya and her sister, Janet duizhang, bought these lovely Geta! I wish I could've bought them too.

Item: Ice shaving
Place: Modern Toilet, Taipei
Description: We shared this ice shaving for night snack before returning to the hotel. If you spot a small ice cream at the corner of this toilet-shaped plate, it's shaped like a poop. What a "gross" delicacy, isn't it?

Item: Breakfast package
Place: Taipei Hero House
Description: Aside of the typical Doraemon bread you saw earlier, included in the breakfast package for each of us were another set of Doraemon bread, onigiri, and apple juice box

Item: Ay-chung Flour Noodle
Place: Xi Men Ding night market, Taipei
Description: Lao Shi recommended this so-called noodle for us to taste whilst in Taiwan. So that night, not just group 4 but bunch of other groups lined up in Ay-chung Flour Noodle stall. It was soooo packed with visitors aiming to try this legendary noodle that's passed through generations! I'm telling you it tastes so good!

Item: Fried Quail's Egg
Place: Lu Gang Street, Kaohsiung
Description: Sonya and her sister, Janet duizhang, bought these lovely Geta! I wish I could've bought them too.

Item: Caramel Pudding
Place: 7 Eleven
Description: Stumbled upon this pudding when we first arrived in Taipei! We were so hungry that night and went to 7 Eleven only to find these yummy puddings! Apparently this type of pudding is so famous in Taipei, so it's worth the promotion.

Item: Fujifilm White Polaroid
Place: Camera District, Taipei
Description: Some other people in our group, like Jane, Felicia, and Tasya, were drawn to buying this cute polaroid in a reasonable price!

Item: Colored Gel Pens
Place: Muji Department Store
Description: Sonya and Monika bought these pens at Muji Stationery Store

Item: Marshmallows
Place: Muji Department Store
Description: Sonya and some people in our group bought these marshmallows for Snack

Item: Eslite Paper Bag
Place: Eslite Bookstore in Chung Yo Mall, Taichung
Description: Eslite is the bookstore we visited in Chung Yo Mall, Taichung. It was friggin enormous and it consisted of two stories! Some ended up buying books that were written in Chinese (I didn't though), but still, the place was worth to remember.

Item: Muji Department Store Paper Bag
Place: Muji Department Store
Description: On our first free Sunday, we went to Muji Department Store at Camera District, Taipei. Muji sounds like a very renowned department store in the area that we even looked for it before we saw it. It turns out the items sold there were quite promising (please refers to the marshmallows and colorful gen pens above)

Item: Coffee candies
Place: Forgot ^^", but I guess we got these from a coffee factory on the way to Tainan
Description: I forgot where we got these. Taiwan is pretty known for producing its distinct sweets and snacks. So it it's not from the coffee factory we stopped by on the way to Tainan, we must have got these candies from a retailer store or simply...somewhere in Taiwan.

Item: Temporary Name Tag
Place: Hanging on my chest
Description: We were given out these temporary photo-less name tag with our ID number and group number written below. The name tag was only valid for the first three days before it was replaced with a new one, with a picture of me. Too bad I didn't get to take a picture of the new name tag. Aside of the group and ID number displayed on the name tag, you can see that there's my Chinese name there.

Photos are credit to: Sonya

A series of reunions

2011-07-12T22:02:00.001-07:00

Just last night, I was surprised by my cousin, Monika's, Skype request. We talked a cousin-to-cousin talk yesterday. As a note to you guys, she's like my own sister and now she already left to pursue her dancing education and career in Singapore.

I really miss her so much. I'm quite saddened with the fact that I won't be able to meet her once I get back to Jakarta for vacay, unless my parents allow me to go to Singapore and pay her a visit.

Just tonight, I got another Skype call but this time, it's from Jeje and Didi!

It was short but it's nice to see them although we could only meet through computer screens. Hopefully one day Monika, Jeje, Didi, and I could meet up at a conversation call!
That'd be awesome!

Speaking of skyping with Monika, Jeje, and Didi, I'd like to mention a bit that they are participants of Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan, a study tour program to Taiwan where Monika and I were lucky to meet Jeje, Didi, and the rest of the gang in Group 4 (the group we were assigned in)!

...and guess what? It's been a year since Taiwan trip! Time flies so fast, and in another month, my first year in the US will be completed and I'll soon enter the second one.
Anyway, let's focus on the Taiwan trip first. The Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan program that I joined last year, kicked off on June 21 till July 11, 2010. So, two days before this entry was posted, officially marked the first anniversary since the day the tour ended.

The whole program itself was very much impressive! If you're wondering what I've been through in details, please refer to this. You'll most likely find everything related to the trip!
The aftermath events following the end of the program include of course, reunions. Reunion is a true fact that our bond created within the group has definitely strengthened. Even at the end of the program, we still felt like not splitting up. It was a tearful moment but anyway, we promised to reunite.

The first reunion was held approx. 3 days after we all arrived in Jakarta, which is around July 13/14 (today last year) in Pancious, Mal Kelapa Gading. The idea of the reunion had been initiated since we were exiting the arrival hall in Soekarno-Hatta International airport. Before we parted, we promised we'd have a reunion while we were still having a few days off left before school started (not for me though, I still had a month left before leaving to the US).

That reunion is probably the most joyous one, since it was attended by some members of Group 4 who come from Makassar. A chance of meeting them in the future is definitely very rare :(

During the briefing of Taiwan Guan Mo Tuan, held before the program kicked off, the organizer lady expected all the participants to make friends, stay in contact, and have a reunion after the program ended. She even mentioned and exaggerated. "Last year's group even had their first reunion just a week after the program ended!"

Well, ma'am, you should know that this year (last year)'s group had their first reunion 3 DAYS just after the program ended! See how close we really are?

Second reunion was held at the same time of Celine's birthday in Bandar Jakarta, Ancol. Remember Celine? She's the girl who we succeeded to surprise on the night of her birthday in Tainan.

Another reunion was quite short, and it was also to celebrate Karin's birthday. It was thrown in Chicken Story, Mal Kelapa Gading. It wouldn't have been originally short, if Monika and I hadn't got lost in that enormous mall and spent nearly an hour to look for the venue of the reunion.

The latest reunion only consisted of four people including me: Audrey, Didi, and Jeje. We had a simple dinner in Sushi Tei and that was when I came back from the US for Year End break. It was so nice to know that they actually dedicated this reunion for me. Aww...

I'm going back to Indonesia on August 6, 2011, in case you wonder. My Group 4 friends have been expecting for another reunion, but I'm afraid it won't be the same. Since some of them are going abroad for college, it will surely affect the amount of the attendees (Monika and Jeje are off to Singapore, Sonya is off to Michigan, US, Karin goes to Taiwan, and Audrey is off to Surabaya).

No matter where we would be,
Group 4 sticks until the end!

New Circle of Friends

2011-07-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

Hi! Finally another productive post!
I forgot to mention something that I should've said way earlier: we found a new circle of friends. Elda, Nancy, Aymee, and I are lucky enough to bump into these guys on April, thanks to the invitation of Kevin Leung (or he goes by Long Ge - literally "Big brother Leung" - since we have two Kevins). Remember this post? Yes, that Kevin. Well Elda, Nancy, Aymee, and I have known Long Ge since early of the year (Aymee and I met him first since he was an active member of ISV).

But how we got to know those boys of awesomeness began on April. Long Ge invited us girls to go for hiking in Big Basin, Saratoga. When we first met the other participants, we - girls - were instantly freaked out, due to the big amount of boys compared to us. Basically there were like seven of them (including Long Ge) and three of us, minus Nancy who hadn't joined us in the first place.

So the boys are: Tony, Stefan, Long Ge, Kevin Halim, Ray, Poe, Tanuj. Well, we've known Poe as well prior to the event, but the rest of them were totally new to us girls.

The trip to Big Basin site took 2 hours, and the road that led there was curvy. That was like for 1 hour long (for the curvy road). Apparently almost everyone in the car couldn't stand but feel carsick.

Good thing we got there soon. Time to get started!
It's not my first time hiking though, but I haven't hiked in the US so it should be something new.

The tracks aren't that steep. However, there are some steep parts at some points that we had to be extremely careful. They're quite challenging as well since some terrains were wet, slippery, and not flat (not to mention the cliffs on the side of the path)

We had to climb up all the way there!
Look at the far left. Aymee, Elda, and I are posing for picture, or at least expecting to.

Sometimes we go down the hill.

The rest of time we spent by taking pictures while we could!

Poe and Long Ge always know how to make us laugh in the midst of exhaustion.

Poe and Aymee: "Stefan, do you know where we should go to?"
Stefan: "Err...no idea, apparently." -_-

Keep those smiles up!

Believe it or not, we had to acknowledge that we weren't all that good with navigation. When it comes to traveling in the forest, everything looks the same! So getting lost is definitely inevitable. It's even more unbelievable that in that mean time, we were still taking bunch of pics!

If you notice the picture above, we did bring some gigantic-sized gallons of mineral for us to share while hiking.

Sometimes, due lacking of navigation skills, we find ourselves lost in the forest too - like literally.

Even though we were lost, we kinda looked like we didn't care, but actually we did.

Tanuj: Does he want to cross the road? Look for us? Or was he literally lost?

It was quite a long track that we walked on. Actually there were two options: first is going for the long track, and second for the shorter track. But you know how guys are, they want to go for the long track. So after finishing our supposed-to-be short track, we went on further for the the longer track. Apparently, it was said that the long track would lead us to the peak of a hill, where we would be able to see the seaview.

However, after such a long track we went on, it turns out that the peak of a hill was nothing but a small rocky space that was quite desolate. There was no seaview!!!

Despite our disappointment, Ardy still had some good time pretending what seems to be a professional explorer. With that pose, we were convinced enough that it was as if Ardy was looking in the distance, trying to locate the ocean.

Arriving at the headquarters!

The journey back home wasn't that long, which is good, cos we were completely spent and worn out. I remember the cry of joy we shouted out together when we spotted the parking lot before our sight!

Finally, we did a group picture!
You know what it means? Time for some introduction!
(From left to right, top): Kevin Halim (he goes by Halim), Ardy, Poe, Tanuj, Kevin Leung (he goes by Long Ge), and Ray
(From left to right, bottom): Tony, Aymee, me, Elda, and Stefan.

On the way home, we spotted a nice photographic site. The scenery was simply breathtaking!

This one looks like a Korean drama poster.

The hills are alive with the sound of music!

After an exhausting hiking time, we had a dinner at Fresh Choice in Campbell, took a couple of more pictures, and engaged ourselves in a warm conversation.

Apparently...

We never get enough of hiking!

In less than a week, exactly the next weekend after hiking in Big Basin, we accepted the invitation to have another hiking moment. But this time, we were going to do it in Castle Rock. That was like much closer to Cupertino.
Remember, much closer hiking site = less carsick

This time, Aymee's cousin, Nancy, was introduced to the guys!
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of pictures taken during our Castle Rock hiking.

Castle rock apparently comprises of a lot of rock formations, presumably that's where the place gains its name from. There was actually a site where a huge rock sat on a cliff. Due to the flat surface and the big space the rock had, it became a place for cliff climbers to set their base, as they climbed down the cliff.

It was such a struggle to climb up to the rock, and we certainly did need some help to do so. Too bad Elda couldn't make it to the top of the rock, so she decided to climb to another less steeper rock and strand herself there. Look, the view behind her isn't so bad at all!

Mermaid pose.

There was actually a funny story while we were all (except Elda and Tony) sitting on the rock. We were facing the cliff, which was dangerous, I know. Behind us, a climber came out of nowhere, reaching the base where we were sitting at. His presence instantly shocked us all!

Here's something interesting. Do you notice the picture of the rock formation below? Do you know what it resembles of? Exactly, it resembles a side profile of a human face. It totally looks alike it even creeps me out. Even Long Ge is standing below the "nose" with his finger sticking up to make an impression as if Long Ge is picking the face's nose. Hahaha.

The hiking was short and we even reached the base still in late afternoon. However, after hiking, we had an early dinner at Happy Restaurant in Cupertino cos we were sooo starving!

But the day wasn't over yet, cos we came over to Ardy to play cards and board games till midnight! What a good way to get to know each other, considering it was our second meeting, so we really didn't get to know that well.

I'll make sure to come up with some more stories about our awesome new friends!
Thanks for tuning!

Pictures credit to:
Ardy and Ray

Volunteer Volunteer

2011-07-05T00:52:00.000-07:00

Well, just thought of posting something super random and short to kill time after studying...also to keep you guys posted.
Things have gone quite differently since I became a graphic designer of my college's student volunteer. Even though it's considered a minor officer position, still I'm very proud to become an officer of a club. It drives me to be more active to contribute to college society.

It's quite awkward in the beginning for us - new officers - to run the club meetings and organize the events. We have to thank our predecessors for giving us guidelines how to be dedicated officers.

With the new term coming up, more new members also came to join the club. I made friends with the newbies. The events are even promising and apparently draw a lot of members' interests to participate.

One of the most fun event so far after the election was Mountainview Ala Carte festival held in, well, Mountainview.
It's basically a festival specializing in selling and trading wine and its glasses. So what we - volunteers - do are basically serving people in exchanging the coupons with wine and soda glasses.

As for others, they're given a duty to collect trash, but don't get me wrong. The duty doesn't all suck, but it's actually fun. I actually did contribute a bit in this trash collecting and it actually doesn't demand much more time and hardwork compared to the coupon tradings.

Astha and I were having fun during break.

Visiting Timothy, Cindy, and Michael's stall.

Cindy can't look any sweeter!

Eileena, Bella, Lynn, and Baron still pose with a smile despite the sweltering hot day!

Bumping into Al and Dennis while I was on duty

Keep those spirits up, Channon, Fuzuki, and Zoey!

After approx. 4 hours of exhausting shift, we finished up at 3pm. We were kinda split up at that moment and planned to meet up somewhere so that we could have late lunch together. Since there are bunch of restaurants to pick in the area, we were having a hard time to choose. While making up our minds, we decided to take some more pictures for memories.

Radiating peace!!!

And lastly, we did a group picture before leaving to the chosen restaurant!

We ended up having late lunch in a nearby Italian fusion in the Castro street's restaurant rows. I had myself a bolognaise which turned out not to be exactly what I imagined it to be (spaghetti), but more like ravioli. But still, it was sooo delicious!
We called it a day and it was time for us to part. I shared a ride with Baron, Channon, Lynn, and Zoey. I was dropped at home. I took a quick break before leaving again for a karaoke session with my other friends.

What a long day, and guess what, I'm beginning to tell stories off the topic of the original purpose of the post. Well, point is, it was a fun volunteering activity! Looking forward to joining fall's activities!

Proud to be Indonesian! -part 2

2011-07-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

Before I thought of leaving the museum, just outside the galleries entrances, which is the main hall of the museum, I spotted a white stage where three people were sitting before a low-table. They were seemingly demonstrating or creating something with all materials on the low table.

The main hall itself was decorated with janur – some sort of a huge leaf decoration usually used in Indonesia for weddings and special occasions. I approached them. They consisted of two middle-aged men and a woman in the middle. For a while, I observed what they were working on, and apparently they were working on some sort of traditional artwork. I brought myself to talk.

Me: “Excuse me, (are you) Indonesians?”
Man 1: “Yes, are you also Indonesian?”
Me: “Yes, yes, apa kabar?”

And thus began my conversation. I hoped I didn't disturb their artwork progress. The woman and the other men seemed to be enthusiastic when they discovered that I was Indonesian. Good thing I bumped into them.

I spent about a couple of minutes engaging in a warm conversation with them. We basically shared basic topics ranging from “Where are you from in Indonesia?”, “Where do you live in the US?”, “What's the purpose of museum visit?”, etc. The female artist plastered a smile on her face and joined in the conversation.

Apparently they were native Balinese artists. Such an encounter was surely rare since when else would you bump into traditional native Indonesian people who wear traditional clothes and spoke with thick Balinese accent?

Dude, I feel like I'm at home at the moment
I felt so...overwhelmed when I met these guys.

Fuck the fact that I felt like an American earlier.

I noticed that the first man I talked to left for a bit before returning. Then I told them I would basically hang around for a bit in the exhibition hall. As I wandered off, I happened to pass the gallery doors again. By the time I passed it, the door was suddenly opened, revealing the same security I met earlier.

Security: “You want to come in?”
Me: “I don't have the exhibition ticket.”
Security: “That's alright. Just come in.”
Me: “Ooookay, thank you.”

I walked pass him and enter the first exhibition gallery, much to my surprise. It was pretty weird though. He wouldn't allow me to enter in the first place but when I passed the door again (without any intention to visit the Bali exhibition since I gave it up), he let me in.

There were some assumptions lingering in my mind:

The Indonesian man who left probably went to the security guy and told him to let me in
The security guy probably saw me talking to these Indonesian artists and went like “Holy shit, this girl is Indonesian. I felt so guilty for not letting in to the exhibition of her own country.”

The exhibition itself was not really packed with people. But at least there were some visitors taking their own tour inside. All the exhibits of course, seemed familiar to me. But the whole exhibition was set up in such a different way than the ones I saw back in Indonesian museums.

Somehow the exhibits here were well-kept, neat, and were provided with clean info panels. It was much on the contrary to Indonesian museums, where exhibits were mostly dusty, dirty, and even the museum atmosphere itself felt so stuffy.

I felt a bit crept out when I found myself in a quiet zone where there were no visitors, but the place was filled with traditional masks as exhibits. Well, you get the idea.

At the end of the exhibition tour, I bumped into a small theatre room, quite packed with people, which was playing a documentary video about Ngaben – Balinese cremation ritual. Pride went over me as I didn't feel the need of reading the subtitles as I could understand what those people were saying in the video.

After the video was done, I exited the theatre, which led me to the main hall again. This time, I noticed that the stage was surrounded by quite a few people. As a courtesy, I was intending to bid farewell to the Balinese artists because I was about to leave the museum. Apparently we chatted again despite the fact that the Balinese artists' demonstration was being watched by the visitors. It was as if the artists themselves didn't really care and kept talking to me. After all, the visitors didn't interact with the artists.

The dialogue was conducted in Bahasa.

Man 2: “What do you think of the exhibition?”
Me: “It was impressive, really. I really want to go here again but next time, with my friends.”
Man 2: “Do come again next time with your friends. Spread the word. We'll stick around here till September (don't remember the date)”
Me: “Okay, I'll be sure to pay you a visit sir.”
Man: “If you come on Sunday, you'll get a free entrance ticket to the museum, which is even better.”
Me: “Sure things, sir.”

At that moment, I'm pretty sure the viewers were observing the conversation that went on between me and the artists. I even spotted that one of the viewers was actually the participant of the field trip I just joined, aka my classmate. She was like looking at me in confusion. If only the history professor was there to witness my conversation. I wondered if I could get an extra credit point for making a conversation with these native Indonesian people.

Alas, it was hard for me to part with the artists and step out of the building. It came to my realization that Indonesian people possessed great tolerance and intention to connect with fellow Indonesians outside the mother country.

That is why, no matter there's a bunch of Indonesian people in my campus, at least we know each other. We don't have to be really close but at least we know who's who. Like my case, I felt great to be able to connect with these native Indonesian people. We were part of each other and that was what drove us to create those connections within.

Credit to: Gustavo Thomas Theatre.

I headed to the exit just when I met another field trip participant. She clearly wasn't my classmate. She came from a different section of history class. Apparently we were both heading to the same direction which was the Muni and Bart station. We walked together to the station and made friends. But at the station, we had to part since she had to take a Bart to the north and I had to take Muni back to Caltrain station.

I arrived at Caltrain station a bit earlier than expected. The upcoming train wouldn't show up until an hour (2 pm). I spent some time shopping around in Safeway and bought some snacks.

The train arrived in Sunnyvale Caltrain station at 3. I took a bus straight to my campus to catch up with my friends. It was Friday and practicing badminton every Friday at 3.30 pm became my routine. We had a good dinner after the practice later in the evening.

What a way to end such an exhausting yet impressive day!

<< Part 1

Proud to be Indonesian! -part 1

2011-07-03T01:26:00.000-07:00

June 10, 2011 marked one of the most memorable events occurring this year for me. That day was supposedly going to be an exciting history field trip day to Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, with a couple of my friends.

Apparently, it didn't really start off well since my friends (who planned to go with me) gradually cancelled their trip plans just the night before the D-day due, leaving me on my own. At that time I was like “Fuck!” I was thinking to drop the field trip as well since I thought it was impossible for me to take off to SF by myself. But on a second thought, it would surely risk my grade. Even more, the day of the field trip was the day where I had to turn in my take-home exam. So it would surely cost a lot if I happened to be absent.

In the mean time, I came up with plan B: going to Asian Art Museum by myself. I quickly searched for the public transportations to take, the direction, and not to mention prepared the cash. If the plan worked (and it had to), it would be my very first solo (backpacking?) trip to a not-so-nearby city.

I took off early in the morning, counting myself on my phone's GPS. After all, GPS was all that I needed to avoid getting lost. I nearly lost my hope since the second bus that would take me to Sunnyvale Caltrain station hadn't come for almost half an hour, meanwhile the history professor wanted all students to be in the museum lobby by 10. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make it in time. But just as my hope was about to leave, the bus came to my sight, much to my gratitude.

Going to San Francisco wasn't really as frantic as heading to the museum from SF Caltrain station (after a train ride which lasted approx. 1 hour). After all, I'd been to SF by public transport before, so at least I knew how to get there. Apparently, there was only one transport needed to go to Asian Art museum, which is by Muni (some sort of a monorail/subway). It wasn't really hard to go to Asian Art museum, as I only needed to get off in Civic Center station and walked less than a mile to my ultimate destination.

Despite being by myself at that moment, being inside Muni along with fellow Americans really gave me a strong impression as if I was one of them. It was a weird feeling, to leave my identity as an Indonesian for a while and allow myself to merge with them.

Took some pictures before entering the museum. The neighborhood that surrounded the museum offered a good deal of landscapes.

Guess what I found before entering the museum building.

Can't wait to see the Bali exhibition, but first, of course I needed to attend the field trip.

It was 10.30 am when I got there, which means, I was 30 minutes late. I quickly went to the admission and received my group tour badge. The admission guy didn't seem to know where the group was currently is.

Another problem: I needed to find the party on my own. Thus began my search of the group. I started from the third floor (the beginning of the whole exhibition) since I thought they have just started tour not so long ago. They should be around the beginning of the museum exhibition. The silence of the museum pretty helped me to find the group. Apparently I hadn't missed a lot so I was able to keep up with the tour.

The field trip itself quite left me with an ordinary impression. After all, it was a normal field trip, the kind of field trip you would usually involve in. Basically, with the history professor as the guide, my fellow classmates and I explored exhibition ranging from Chinese art, Korean art, to lastly Japanese art. It was impressive, still, but not till the end of the whole field trip.

The field trip ended with viewing Japanese exhibition gallery, which was located at the second floor (the main museum exhibition was located in the second and third floor. The first one is basically for special exhibition).

Anyway, after descending through an escalator and bidding my professor goodbye as well as my classmates, I thought for a second while looking at my watch. It was still 12pm. I had a club meeting in an hour and a half, but I thought if I took off back to Cupertino, I wouldn't be able to make it on time. So I decided to skip today's meeting (in fact, I already informed an officer and emailed him the presentation slides in case I wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting that day).

For a moment, I thought of visiting Bali exhibition wouldn't be troublesome. Instead of heading straight to exit, I stole some moment to go to Bali exhibition gallery. The gallery consisted of two galleries, when I was about to open one of the gallery's glass door, I spotted a security was standing at the entrance door side.

Security: “Do you have the ticket?”
Me: *dumbfounded and showed him the ticket I have*
Security: “Unfortunately you can't use this ticket. The privilege doesn't include this exhibition. You need to go to the admission and buy a ticket for this special exhibition.”
Me: “Alright. Thanks.”

So, I was thinking it would cost more for me if I spent more money. Well, I could always return to this place someday before September (when the exhibition would come to its end).

To be continued...

Part 2 >>

Dreams do come true?

2011-07-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'll be the happiest person on earth if I have this thing in my hand.

Just sayin...

I just thought of finding something to clear out my depressed mind.
I wish I lived in LA (not really)
I wish I could make Disneyland my second home
I wish I could go to Disneyland after a stressing exam/school (too far fetched)
I wish I could take pictures with those costume characters no matter how silly I'd look
I wish I could get on the rides without feeling dizzy
I wish I could listen to Disney movie score playing in the background
I wish...

Too many

Go back to reality, Car...

Holy excrement!! That's like the shortest, randomest post I've ever had so far!!!
This one should go to Tumblr though.
Anyway....

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye

2011-07-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

Farewell, farewell...

This post-final week was probably quite one of the busiest week in the past few months. Fact is, summer is coming as I mentioned in the previous post. With summer's coming, college students prepare to go back to their home countries for summer vacation, moving out/in, transferring, etc. I wasn't going back to Indonesia in a short period of time nor moving out nor transferring, but it doesn't mean I just stayed at home while my friends were moving out/in, transferring, and going back home.

Agnes' farewell was merely one out of quite many farewells I attended. Another one (out of many other farewells) took form as a graduation+prom event held by Indonesian Student Organization.

It took place on June 10, 2011 in Saint-Clare Hotel, San Jose. Remember the invitation design I showed you? Yep it was for this event.
At first, I kind of doubted whether to attend or not, but then exactly three days before the D-day, I made up my mind to attend. Later I was bothered with the fact that I didn't have dress and shoes that matched the theme: classy. Two days before the D-day, I went to the mall after school to look for a dress (it was the quickest dress hunting, trust me), and the next day, I did the same thing only that time, I looked for a pair of matching shoes.

I had quite a lot of selections when it comes to dresses, starting from bright pink, marine blue, pastel cream, to finally...black. Black is after all the most neutral color (besides matching the prom's dress code), so I was thinking I could reuse the dress for some upcoming occasions.

The proud graduates!

The transfer students were the main focus throughout the prom. I gotta say the whole graduation+prom event worked out really well. I truly saluted the committee who had worked for the event, despite only having up to six members. They surely have put a lot of effort to make it all happen. The food served for fine dinner was successfully indulging. The event itself was quite entertaining, pretty spontaneous at some points, and most importantly...organized!

After the event came to its end, we took pictures at the lobby.

Some other farewells include BBQ in Watsonville held by International Student Volunteer. The event was actually very fun but too bad I don't have the pictures. But I'd love to post about the story next time.

Well, following farewells, since some transferring students moved out, the roommates of those transferring students (they are remaining students) moved out as well. These remaining students looked for some other places to live, possibly even sharing apartment with other remaining students. At least it's better for them rather than leaving alone after their roommates move out to the university.

Anyway, I helped these remaining students move out as well. I did help by loading furnishings into the car. So yeah, it was quite a busy week.

And...the last farewell that concluded the whole farewell weeks just happened yesterday.

This week, I'd been informed that Kevin Halim, Aymee's boyfriend, was going to take off to Jakarta on July 1 midnight. I had anticipated to take him to the airport along with my friends, and especially he's one of the transferring students (he's going back to Jakarta for summer vacation before going to his university on August).

After finishing my early evening class on June 30, Elda told me that Jessica, another friend of mine, was going back to Indonesia the same night as well. I thought of taking Jessica and her sister, Sharon, to the airport and leaving Halim's farewell plan.
However, it turned out that Halim's flight would be nearly at the same time as Jessica's (despite having different flights). So there was a chance for me and Elda to meet up with Halim and his party at the airport. at the same time of Halim's flight, despite having different flights.

From school, I took off straight to Jessica's apartment after picking up Elda at my apartment's bus stop. We had dinner at Krung Thai with Kak Ijan and Kak Rocky in Santa Clara before taking off to San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

We arrived at SFO at around 10.00 pm and immediately took Jessica and Sharon to the check-in counter. Elda and I helped them to load the baggage.

After they got their boarding passes, we all got to meet with Halim and the party in another aisle.

See you on August in Jakarta, Halim!
(From left to right: Ray, Nancy, Halim, Aymee, me, and Elda)

Awwww.....you'll see him again on August, Aymee dear.

The home-comer and the non-home-comer

Roomies and the couple.

The sisters are ready to embrace hometown
(From left to right: Elda, Jessica, Sharon, and I)

After a short chat, Jessica and Sharon entered the scanning place, although it was still an hour before the boarding time (12 am). Halim still wanted to stick around for a while before 12 with the others. Elda and I decided to go home since it was already late and we didn't want to make Kak Rocky wait for us any longer.

So the farewell at the airport concludes the whole farewell week, as mentioned. Right now, I'm looking forward to seeing SFO on August 6, which is (OMG) only a month away. Seriously I never expected time would fly this fast.

Have a nice trip/flight for transferring students, whoever's going somewhere for summer vacation, or moving out!
Safe drive, have enough rest, and enjoy your summer!

SFO farewell pictures are credit to: Elda

Sweets have never been so tempting

2011-06-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently I don't have enough spirits to post any stories significant to my recent life. Right after spring quarter was done, I only had about four days to take a deep breath then another tense life waited after the weekend.

If you ask, I've been doing just fine. Good news is...

Picture by Martin Neuhof

summer is
h e r e ! !

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Say yay, beacheessss!!

So, hello sandals, shorts, T-shirts, tank tops, BIKINI (dude, I'm saying this as if I have one), and uh thin-layered outfit. I guess I've said this for zillionth time but if I have enough time, I'll definitely post some stories here. Hopefully that time will come pretty soon, cos writing stories indeed takes up a lot of time. So full dedication is strongly required.

In the mean time, I'd like to show you guys some of my latest artworks. I'm doing this cos I don't know what to post aside of stories. I simply want to keep you guys posted.

This is the final project I have for Web design class. I gotta say it took up a lot of time and hardwork on it but I'm satisfied about how it turns out to be! Well, the professor actually only allowed max 3 pages. But I ended up making 4 and had no idea which page I had to eliminate in order to meet the qualifications!

Homepage

Premade cake selection

Cake information

Customize cake

Anyway since the theme of the final project is making a fictional self-established company website, I came up with the idea of making a unique pastry/cake shop! Apparently there was someone else in the class who had a similar idea, so I decided to alter the concept a little bit. My cake business is a bit different since I allow visitors to customize their own cake and order it.

Even the professor said this to me:
"You should open up this shop. That's your next assignment."

Ha. Right on, sir. First I need investments and I'm gonna need a couple of people to help open this business. First and foremost, the most fundamental thing ever to do is: I might need to change my major to business or culinary arts haha.

Anyway, what a fun thing to do, right?

Back to spring-summer transition. I had a great time on the weekend. Okay, I know I said I wouldn't post stories but it wouldn't be such a big trouble for me to post one of them briefly. With spring's done, a lot of my friends are transferring, moving out, moving in to a new apartment, graduating, or going back for summer vacation. I attended like 4 farewells over the weekend.

One of the farewells I attended is Agnes'. Well, she's going back to Hong Kong for summer. My friends and I planned to hang out with her before she went back.

Right after finals, we went to have lunch at KFC (we were actually going to have lunch at Curry House but then it was packed with people so...), then we had karaoke.
While waiting for the bus, we took bunch of pics.

...even the bus wasn't able to stop our narcissism mode.

It took a while for us to get to Music Tunnel. We stopped by at KFC near the bus stop. Before choosing KFC, we were thinking to have late lunch at Curry House, but unfortunately, it was still closed. So, KFC is the alternative choice.

Afterwards, we went on to release our tension in Music Tunnel! We sang songs in various languages. Mostly Chinese, Cantonese, and English for sure, but other than that, we also tested our multilingual skills through Korean and Japanese songs

Guess what song we sang to below. It's pretty easy, so if you're a fan of music, you should know about it.

Get it?

We finished our karaoke quite later than expected, but that didn't stop us to continue hanging out. I remember that Agnes also wanted to see a movie. After all, it had been planned before Karaoke, so we decided to go to AMC to check what was on cinemas.

It was such a pain to wait for the bus. It took hella long time. We were quite in a rush because we were planning to catch a movie before 9pm, otherwise we'd have to walk our way home at around 12 (by the time the movie finished, cos there were no more buses operating at that time). We got there pronto. The line for the ticket box was quite long, considering it was Friday and Friday was always the premiere day of new movies.

It was Cars premiere screening day. As a fan of Pixar movies, it's one of the most anticipated movies for me. I was kinda sad at first since Terry already watched it, but we quickly found the solution: Super 8. We all haven't seen it and I checked the rating on internet and the movie received positive reviews (It even beat up Xmen in Box Office Chart!) So yeah, we went on with it.

Overall, the movie's quite interesting. At first I thought it was quite predictable, but seeing it was produced by Steven Spielberg, I gave it an excuse and changed my mind. We were practically entertained with it. I love the storyline and the acting, especially the grown up Elle Fanning really pulled it off.

After the movie, it turns out that I needed to walk all the way home since the bus was no longer operating (it was around 11pm that night, and I was only wearing shorts, slippers, and thin, 3/4-sleeved cardigan). Good heavens my apartment is located nearly two blocks away from the cinema, but with all the darkness surrounding me, it was quite a challenge.

The night was still seemingly young, as I crashed into a neighbor/friend's party and thankfully managed to stay myself sober. My neighbor was transferring to SoCal, so it was going to be her last weekend before moving out.

Anyway, I don't know why but I'm always having this identity-crisis. Nothing big or whatsoever but a lot of people have mistaken me as a Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Taiwanese, and Chinese. Never Indonesian, despite that's what I really am.

It really struck me when an international student I met in Anthropology class went on to me and said. "Are you a resident here?" I don't know why she could identify me as an American. Not just once, but I've encountered quite few people saying that. I feel flattered though, maybe it's a sign for me that my English has slightly improved (yay), but still, I'm proud of being an Indonesian!

Speaking of nationalism, I've got one story I really feel like sharing.
So stay tuned yo! XD

From L A with ♥ pt. 8: End

2011-06-11T18:42:00.001-07:00

Previously: The train that was about to take off once we got to the station was apparently the last train. Good thing we caught it on time, otherwise we needed to wait for...I don't know, tomorrow morning? I guess? Eventually, we spent the rest of the night packing and tried to reassembled all the items we bought in LA and the clothes as well. Phiew, what a night.

Okay, I know this is already beyond expired and even unnecessary to brought up again. But thing is, it came to my realization that I haven't posted the last part!!! *lame*, I know. Anyway, let's just get on with it.

It was our last day to spend in LA before going back in the afternoon.

We woke up a little bit late than days before, seeing how worn and spent we were. Seeing it was our last day in LA, we decided to shop a little more in Japantown. We dropped by at some souvenir shops we'd visited before and see if there was anything else we were interested in buying.

In one of them, three of us decided to buy identical umbrellas with different colors. Mine is pink, Elda's is blue, and Aymee's is red. The umbrella's very worth it for sure, because mine and Elda's have broken off a bit and can no longer be used.

Bidding farewell with Japantown!

The restaurant we had our dinner in after Universal Studios

There should be Koreatown on the sign as well :)

Gonna miss this place

Yeah, we basically strolled around Japantown just to get a glimpse before we departed back to San Jose. Really worth the walk!

Downtown LA from Japantown

My two most favorite pictures among all pictures taken during our LA Trip.
Gotta love it!

Shadow play

While checking out if we left anything behind in the room for the last time, we managed to take some pictures. The lighting was good if you kept the curtain open!!!

It was around midday and we skipped lunch in order to get ready to go to the airport. The shuttle scheduled to pick us up finally arrived at the lobby.
See you Japantown! Looking forward to seeing you again in the future.

Last picture taken in front of the lobby of Kyoto Grand Hotel.
Taken by Super shuttle driver who complimented on how we looked.

We happened to pass Staples Center and got a close look of it. Suddenly the whole SMTown drama emerged in my mind again.

The check-in procedure was a bit complicated since we had to self-check-in in order to save more time. The line for the scanning process was unbelievably long, but glad the whole procedures ran smoothly until we reached the gate at the very end on time. Aymee had lunch with a sandwich she bought during the last minutes before boarding.

Our trip mascot: Snowball

Snowball and its owner

The flight back to San Jose was okay. Nothing special or different than the last flight except I couldn't sleep. Even it was freaking hot inside the cabin!

Touching down at San Jose, I began to realize how San Jose and Los Angeles were two completely different cities in terms of vibe! For the last four days, I've been indulged too much with nice sights, crowded places, tall, colorful buildings, and San Jose was just the opposite of it. Somehow the Silicon Valley atmosphere I felt when I walked out of the arrival hall made me miss Los Angeles, despite the fact that we just went there for the last four days lol.

AYMEE'S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE
On the way home in the shuttle, my friend called me. It hit me that it was the day my friends, Elda, and I were planning to surprise Aymee in the evening. My friend, Poe, called that day, reminding me of the plan and what to do. What a good timing though, because Aymee was sleeping, but still I couldn't talk loudly about the plan. She might be awake at anytime.

After arriving at Elda's and my apartment, the shuttle was off to drop Aymee at hers. Elda and I dropped our luggages at our apartment first before we headed off to Pho for late lunch (it was around 5 o'clock, or maybe I should call it as early dinner), also to talk about our surprise plan for Aymee.

We took a bus to the restaurant, which was located across my campus. Poe, who called earlier, caught up with us to discuss about our plan. He bought with him some snacks and games just in case we wanted to stay a little longer at Aymee's place after the surprise.

Elda, Poe, and I went to my apartment to wrap the present and to prepare the cake. Another friend of ours that we invited, Kevin, arrived at my apartment as well to proceed the surprise. After everything was set, we took off to Aymee's without telling her.

Anyway, we already told her cousin Nancy about the surprise so that she could keep it a secret from Aymee.

Here came the moment of surprise....

Aymee, the Happy Birthday girl :)

Unwrapping the presents

Don't cut yourself!

We munched on our snacks although we didn't get to play games on the projector Kevin had brought. But still it was fun though! We laughed and saw each other dance to celebrate Aymee's birthday.

What an exhausting yet a long day! XD

E N D

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N O T E : Aymee's birthday marks the end of our whole LA trip. Overall, it was a very impressive and memorable vacation. Actually this is the second vacation I had after Denver trip for Thanksgiving 2010. Huge thanks for Elda and Aymee for making it all happen. Thanks for all readers to keep up with the reading even though there was a huge gap between part 6 and part 7, but I somehow managed to finish it. Hope you guys enjoyed the whole story and I'll make sure to come up with more exciting stories!

<< Part 7

Artsy week

2011-06-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Long time no see! I'm pretty sure I've missed out a lot of important things to tell here. Great deal of experiences have happened throughout my absence in the blog and if I wanted to share all the magnificent things here, there will be way too many.

This post will be dedicated yours truly to my recent digital artwork. Yeah, I gotta say I've been quite productive when it comes to art these days, thanks to my Web Design class.

The idea is, I was to create three homepage designs based on three different themes.

Corporate
It has to be somehow professional, formal, and clean-looking and must be related to technology or business...

...and I kinda hate how mine turns out to be.

Small Business
Got any company to establish in mind? I came up with a private cinema where you can basically rent movies, watch them there, or simply bring them home.

Scratch #1: Normal mode

Scratch #2: Hover mode
If you hover over one of the option boxes (that take form as a film roll), one of the box will enlarge and a light will be reflected out of the projector at the bottom of the page.

Pop Culture
The concept is basically anything flashy, extreme, and dynamic that easily draws people (particularly teenagers). Too bad I couldn't come up with something specific cos the theme is just way too wide. Considering I'm a teenager, there are too much themes popping up in mind. Anyway I managed to come up with one and I'm not even sure you can sense the pop culture theme here.

Yeah, I came up with Greek myth theme. Too boring, you think?

Version 1.0

Version 2.0

Version 3.0
Most favorite version. You can tell, can't you?

Aside of doing website sketches on Photoshop, I used up my Photoshop trial as a chance to produce as many as artwork before it's expired. Well, no jaw dropping works as of now. But good thing that this month is quite an artsy productive month for me.

Anyway, speaking of artsy... (well this entire post does speak about it, doesn't it?), I've recently got elected as the graphic designer of my college's International Student Volunteer Club. Starting from late May, I've been in charge for graphic and design-related issues. Some of my works below are stuff I did for the club.

Right now I'm working on the club logo. It should be done pretty soon.

Here's another digital work I did. This one, requested by my friends, is for my college's graduation and prom. At first, the design was a bit cluttered in all sides of it, even until the invitation itself reaches the point of being printed out and given away to the attendees. Well, I hope they didn't notice all the clutter and the slight mistake.

Well, that's all I have so far. I'm looking forward to posting more, now I'm getting back to my homework and studies...or at least I'm trying to.

Have a nice weekend!! :)

Love is no distance

2011-05-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

She was mine - A.J Rafael 

Jesse:
So I hopped on a train,
Three in the afternoon,
I don't know when I'm coming back,
But I hope that its soon,
See I never thought (never thought)
that I'd have to leave your side.

AJ:
Its only physically,
But know that you will be on my mind,
Twenty four hours at a time,
'Cause in my eyes you were mine (you were mine).

Both:
No matter where you go,
I won't be very far,
'Cause in my head I'll be right there where you are,
'Cause love has no distance baby,
Love, love has no distance baby,
No, not when it comes to you and me.

AJ:
See she wrote me a letter,
Said the weather wasn't better,
But she said that she was doing fine,
I wanna see you face to face,
That's what she wrote to me that day,
And I knew that it was all a sign.

Jesse:
So I wrote back with this song,
Promise it won't be too long,
Wanna make up for all our lost time,
'Cause in my eyes you were mine (you were mine).

Both:
No matter where you go,
I won't be very far,
'Cause in my head I'll be right there where you are,
'Cause love has no distance baby,
Love, love has no distance baby,
No, not when it comes to you and me.

Jesse:
So I'm lookin through these boxes.
My life's gone off track.
'Cause its been three years.
She hasn't written back.
But in my eyes.
She's still mine.

AJ:
And I know it sounds so stupid,
To be waiting this long,
But I'm still in love and I know I'm not wrong,
'Cause in my eyes,
She was mine.

Both:
No matter where you go,
I won't be very far,
'Cause in my head I'll be right there where you are,
'Cause love has no distance baby,
Love, love has no distance baby,
No, not when it comes to you and me.

Awake and sober

2011-04-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I haven't posted a general post just to say hi to you guys.
Just to keep you posted.

Nothing much happens to me these days, except my friends and I went out for barbecue on the weekend. But then I have to welcome the first busy week of the whole quarter which is exactly this week. The truth is, I've got three exams this week. One of them is a quiz to be exact, which required skills to memorize 1223467234 terms. Well, not that much of course, but you get the idea.

I kind of hate my English skills are heading to these days, I mean orally. Cos all of a sudden, my natural accent went 'poof'. Even it reached the point where I heard myself speaking in Singaporean/Indonesian/Javanese accent all of a sudden during Web Design spontaneous presentation. A lot of 'uhms' and 'errs' might be excused, accents? That's another story.

Not that I feel embarrassed, but I guess at least now I know how I talk naturally when I'm lazy enough to use my natural accent. But really, I'm not faking my American accent. I grew up watching tons of American movies and instinctively picked up the way Americans speak. It sort of stuck in me.

Anyway...
Another factor might be laziness. Speaking of laziness, Bruno Mars just released a song that pretty much depicts most of people's life when they are in lazy mode. The lyrics exactly match why lazy habit, so yeah, I guess you can relate it to yours too.

I've been wondering why most of my friends are into Tetris these days. I mean, it's a classical game and not my favorite one either. So I decided to give it a try one day and guess what, I got super addicted to the game!!! Well, not that addicted, but for a non-gamer like me, playing 6 rounds non stop is considered an addiction.

Currently, I'm on Level 12. My friends' levels are waaaaaayyy higher than mine that I feel a little intimidated. Often do I get annoyed with this game cos everytime you lose, you'll lose a point and if you keep on losing, your level will downgrade to the level below your current level. Also, everytime your opponent gets matching pieces that they need, I always get the opposite, which often leads me to being KOed. Sounds like the game is biased enough, eh? So, due to that game system, I always win but then I lose, I win, I lose, I win, I lose.

I assume the game must have something to do with conspiracy.

Here's something else I want to share with you guys too. But don't laugh at it okay?

I'm telling you: I'm a terrible cook. My "piece of art" may be exquisite-looking - a little too crowded for sure - to you but if you take a closer look, it consists of nothing but bunch of unrelated dishes, ranging from fish balls, fish cakes, crab sticks, mushrooms, carrots, spinach, potato, and a whole lot more. I'm a soup person. I always cook soup and suck at cook something else (I can, but it won't taste as good as my soup).
Even after I saw the picture I just took, I was like "F*ck, what the hell is this???"

If you ask what kind of food that is above you, I wouldn't give you the exact answer cos even I don't know what exactly that I cooked!

I guess it's safe to say that it's a combination of miso soup, fish ball soup, and vegetable soup. Well, I don't have the proper name for that but I'll let you define it by yourself.

My roommate Elda is way better in cooking. Go check her blog and I'll let you drool over her cooking.

One more thing before I'm signing off, since my history notes have been calling out for me:

I'M GOING BACK TO INDONESIA ON AUGUST!!!

Phiew...well, the homecoming story isn't even finished and I'm going back again? Time flies so fast, huh. It feels as if I just got back to Indonesia yesterday. It's pretty contradictory for some people I guess. Not that I don't miss my home country. In fact, I really do miss a lot of things that I still can't find here. The list is gonna be very long, you wouldn't want to read it now in this post.

Night/Morning/Evening/Afternoon peeps!

Homecoming pt 4

2011-04-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

h o m e c o m i n g

part 4
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ATTENTION!
Again, just to let you guys know that this post is slightly different from any other posts you'll find in this blog. It's rather writings-heavy. So if you're not really into long texts or can't stand of reading a great deal of writings, simply skip it and wait till I finish all the parts. But for those who are curious enough and will to read it, you are more than welcome to do so. Enjoy!

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When I got into the airplane, I plopped down to my seat. Much to my disappointment though, I forgot to request the window's seat. Instead, I was placed in the middle, between an Asian girl and a scrawny tall man with long blonde hair and fierce Harley-Davidson-rider-ish look. Also, although it was not a surprise anymore, the airplane provided no personal entertainment equipment usually installed in each seats. So I began to think what I was going to do for the next fourteen hours ahead. Well, reading a book and sleeping might be the best solution.

So there I was, sitting in my seat for as long as I could remember. I tried to make short conversation with especially the girl that sat next to me by the window. But it was very short because I believe she was also tired, and so was I. Sometimes I woke up a little bit just to watch what movie was played on the huge screen in front of the cabin section. I vividly remembered that they played Charlie St Cloud over and over again.

Since there was nothing much to do on the plane, I decided to spend the rest of the flight sleeping and only to be woken up by a flight attendant that notified me it was already time to breakfast and dinner. Whether it was breakfast or dinner, I couldn't tell the difference, because everytime I opened the window lit to see if it was bright or not, it was always dark. So dawn or evening, I could care less. Something strange happened to me on the plane.
The first meal served was dinner and I was literally woken up by the nice flight attendant, who meaningfully stared at me and threw me a question in Mandarin. Since I heard her mentioning “fan”, which means “rice”. When the flight attendant stopped with an expecting smile, I told her “Fan”. Then after asking the Harley-Davidson guy and the girl next to me, she put a meal set on my table and moved on to another row. It was inevitable for me to accept the fact that I did look like a Chinese.

At that moment, I thanked my mom for gradually implanting me with basic Mandarin words. I never had a formal background when it comes to Mandarin. My mom – who is of a Chinese descendant – speaks really fluent Mandarin. Therefore I instinctively picked up the words my mom often says and tries to ask her for translation. “Fan” is one of the words that I picked up, and at the moment I succeeded to convey my Mandarin sayings to the flight attendant, it brought a particular satisfaction to me.

Even though some people often said that airplane food was plain and tasteless, I found it quite delicious in some ways, maybe because of the humidity on the air. The humidity drew thirst and hunger to me, that's why when I was exposed to any kind of food onboard, I would be more than glad to receive it. No matter it was my favorite or not. Although the breakfast food was a bit weird. Not the food entirely, but the omelet in specific. I simply tasted nothing but a plain omelet before I decided to sprinkle loads of salt and pepper on it – something I rarely do.

t o b e c o n t i n u e d . . .

Some junks that might worth to see

2011-04-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's been an exhausting day today. I don't know why. The thing is, I only had two classes. Yeah, two yet energy-spending ones. Web design class starts to get a little busy starting from today, with all the presentation and upcoming first project that will be given on Thursday. I also studied all night long yesterday for today's English quiz, only to find out that it was postponed.

So bed was all I needed today. I went home and literally slumped myself on the bed. I took a nap for two hours (that's even longer than my usual nap time length) and got a very weird dream, which I'm going to tell you about it whenever I feel like writing it.

Anyway, I won't write much today. Just want to keep you posted. It came to my mind that I haven't showed any of my artwork that I did last quarter in Beginning Drawing class. So here are what I basically created. They might not really spoil your sight and not as professional looking as you might have expected.
But hope they would at least worth to see.

Title: Bench
Drawn on: red carton
Materials: 2B pencil and white colored pencil
Note: Not finished yet but I love how it actually gives a slight sense of 3D. I don't know if you see that way.

Title: The Well-Respected Figure
Drawn on: brown carton
Materials: 2B pencil and white colored pencil
Note: I'm very suuuure that he was actually someone famous. Can't figure out who. Let me know if you find out!

Title: The Globe Showered in Light
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: charcoal pencil
Note: I was about to submit this work as my final in-class project to be graded (cos most in-class projects are merely practice and ungraded), but it was ripped at the middle top. TT__TT

Title: A Chair's Silhouette
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: charcoal pencil
Note: Another in-class project. Sorry, for the blurry picture. Can't seem to get it right.

Title: Self-portrait 1
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: It's my very first take-home project, done at the beginning of the course. But I've managed to improve my self-portrait skills throughout the course. You'll see it right below.

Title: Self-portrait 2
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: It was done for my final project. Look at the drastic transformation. It doesn't look THAT good, but still, I'm surprised to see how my drawing skills have fully increased throughout the quarter.

Title: Masked
Drawn on: white A2 paper, transparent paper
Materials: 2B pencil, permanent OHP pen, color pencil
Note: My final project. The mask features the theme of mardi gras. The unique looking items you see represent my interests and hobby. It was drawn on a transparent paper that was placed on top of the self-portrait 2.

Title: Frogs
Drawn on: Newsprint paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: Not good at drawing animals. Nuff said.

Title: Jar
Drawn on: Newsprint
Materials: charcoal pencil
Note: I practiced on making a shiny effect on this bronze jar.

Title: Portrait of a Friend
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: Portrait of my friend Aymee. Hopefully it looks just like the real person.

Title: Kristin Chenoweth caricature
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: One of my most favorite projects. Just can't believe that I can actually draw caricatures!

Title: Wooden, small-scaled home
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: Nothing special about this, except the fact that I made this on the verge of sleeping in the class

Title: Twins!
Drawn on: black carton
Materials: white colored pencil
Note: The only project in the class that involves collage. Sprouse twins FTW!

Title: Studying
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: Pen
Note: The project makes me practice my skills in drawing with continuous line.

Title: Anonymous
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B and 4B pencils
Note: I'm also pretty sure he's someone famous. The teacher mentioned about his name in the class but I forgot it!

Title: Bonsai
Drawn on: newsprint
Materials: charcoal pencil
Note: My first negative space/silhouette project.

Title: Face proportion
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: She looks like EMMA ROBERTS! How scary is that?

Title: Life Drawing
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: My last in-class project. Basically each student was to strike a pose in front of the class, and we all have to draw his/her pose in approx. 30 seconds. Excuse the clutters.

Title: Backyard
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: ink pen (or G-pen) and permanent OHP pen
Note: My least favorite project which uses Van Gogh sketchy drawing style. I could've made better than this.

Title: Frowning
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: 2B pencil
Note: I used several shading styles. I kinda hate the way I drew the eyebrows. She looks fierce instead of...frowning

Title: Going to Balloon Exhibition
Drawn on: white A2 paper
Materials: Marker, mechanical pencil, O.H.P marker, color pencil
Note: My best and most favorite project!!! It's actually midterm project though. The pictures at the first and the last storyboard are cut right from a magazine. I was to make the connection between those two pictures, which ends up as a movie storyboard.

Title: King Kong
Drawn on: newsprint
Materials: Charcoal
Note: Naomi Watt's expression = FAIL T_T

Well, I guess that's it. I gotta either study now or revise my essay. Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day. Not so much to do for tomorrow though, but tomorrow's classes will be mostly lectures.

From L A with ♥ pt. 7: Cross Culture

2011-04-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

Unlike the previous titles, I kind of like how I entitle this post. Cross Culture refers to three different places that have three different yet strong vibes: Indonesian, Hollywood, and Korean.

This post is image heavy. Just want to let you know.

Previously: To go there, we didn't have to take the bus in Wilshire Boulevard when we first got off. Apparently there was a bus stop that would lead us to Simpang Asia. What the heck, the post's getting longer! It was still a long day, but I'll cut off here so you won't hurt your eyes reading such a loooong text.

Still on the same day, as you may tell.

From Westwood Boulevard just slightly several feet from UCLA entrance, we waited for bus #12 that would take us all the way to National Boulevard, where Simpang Asia was. Apparently, bus #12 happened to be the rarest bus to ever stop at the bus stop. So our patience was really tested, especially we were so damn hungry at that time. I kept motivating myself by thinking of Cah Kangkung, Nasi Campur, Lodeh, and all of my favorite Indonesian food that I love and I hope would be available in the restaurant.

Finally, after ages of waiting, the bus that we'd been waiting for came. It took quite a while to go to Simpang Asia. I barely remembered whether we needed to switch a bus or not, but as far as I remember, it was only a one-bus ride. Good for us.

The restaurant turned out to be not really big as I thought it would be, but it has a nice family-friendly atmosphere that brought comfort to us. Even more surprising, the waiter and the waitress in duty turned out to be Indonesians! So yeah, the waiter brought us the menu and we spent like more than 30 minutes to decide which food to order. I'm sure he was already getting used to this sight – a group of Indonesian college students trying to make up their minds on what food to order.

No wonder, cos the restaurant was said to have the completest menu among all Indonesian restaurants in – probably – Calif, especially the fact is, we actually lived very far from this restaurant. So, once in a blue moon, no?

We finally made up my mind. Aymee came up with Nasi Uduk and Sayur Nangka, I came up with Nasi Warteg and Sayur Lodeh for breakfast, and Elda came up with Nasi Uduk with Sayur Kangkung, Tahu+Tempe, and siomay for breakfast too. I know, we sound like we've never eaten these stuff for ages, ay?

Tahu and Tempe (Fried tofu and fermented soybean cake)

Cah Kangkung (some sort of fried spinach with chili spicing)

Nasi Warteg
(mixed rice with chopped boiled egg, beef, pineapple dipped into coconut milk soup, cucumber, chicken, fried peanut - okay enough the writer's drooling)

After we finished our lunch, we paid and visited the grocery store which was located right next to the restaurant. Since the grocery store shared the same name with the restaurant, we were convinced that it would sell Indonesian groceries and products.
And here's where the euphoria began... (background music: Survival – Daylight OST to add more dramatization)

Aymee: “They have Taro!!!!” (Indonesian chips similar to Cheetos)

Elda: “Omygosh there's KOPIKO!!” (coffee candies)

Aymee: “Teh BOTOL!!!!” (a famed tea product in Indonesia)

Me: “Kacang Pilus Garudaaaaa!!!!” (Coated peanut balls)

Aymee: “Pop mie!!!” (cup noodles)

Elda: “Minyak kayu putiiihhh!!!!” (Cajuput oil)

Me: “Marie Regal Biscuit!!!” (milk biscuit)

Aymee: “Guys, I found something that's even much better....*drumroll* BENG BENG!!!” (crunchy caramel chocolate bar)

Yeah it was THIS hilarious. 98% of the whole products displayed in the store is Indonesian products, so you can imagine what it's like reconciling with the products we had longed to consume since our departure to the US.

The mentioned products above are all imported from Indonesia, and are impossible to find here. It's weird how back in Indonesia, I wasn't really a fan of any of the products mentioned above. But after not tasting it for more than half a year, I kind of missed consuming the products, which leads me - and not just me but also Elda and Aymee - to go ecstatic over the products we found.

That's why, back in Indonesia, there's this famous slogan of "Consume local products" yet Indonesian people simply just ignore those words and go on consuming imported ones. Here, Indonesian people feel everything in reverse. We long for Indonesian products, no matter how we hardly consumed it back in Indonesia.

Elda and Aymee even bought each box of Beng beng. One box could even contain up to twenty Beng beng. I don't understand why Beng Beng is actually THAT famous. Everyone likes it for sure, and even I like it, even better, it's actually addictive. So if you spot an Indonesian and you expose him with a package of Beng Beng, he won't hesitate to devour it.

We spazzed over these Indonesian products like they were some hot boys. But after exploring the store aisles through aisles, we ended up carrying these products we really wanted to buy. Oh by the way, even the store's employees are Indonesians! Wow, I started to doubt whether the bus was taking us straight to Jakarta or another corner of LA.

I didn't buy much stuff, considering how small my suitcase is. Too bad. Elda and Aymee really got a lot of stuff and it was good for them. I'm really sure they had plenty of space to place their items.

The items I finally ended up buying
(Coated peanut, cup noodle, tea box, a box of black tea sachets - ALL ARE INDONESIAN PRODUCTS)

Elda and Aymee, especially, had to sort their items which to buy and which not. After a while, they finally made up their mind and went to the cashier counter to pay.

Aymee still deciding on what to buy

Finally, with our shopping bags on both of our hands, we were ready for the next and third destination. Actually the destination itself was quite unplanned. It was already 4 pm when we left Simpang Asia and headed towards the next destination, which was...no other than...Hollywood Boulevard! At first, I had a feeling that we couldn't make it to Hollywood on time, because we would be having dinner in Koreatown.

But it was just 4 pm and the sun was still high up. I was worried if we went to Koreatown that early, we would spend hours till dinner time wandering around. Cos I was convinced that Koreatown didn't have much shopping places to explore, despite the fact that everything there was all Korean.

I felt confident about going to Hollywood Boulevard. Besides, we weren't going to spend much time there. All we did was just strolling around and taking pictures, maybe followed with a bit of shopping. Though the distance from Simpang Asia was relatively short, we needed to switch buses midway.

I decided to lead the way, despite my poor ability in navigation. Aymee, Elda, and I just relied ourselves on my Google map, cos Elda's wasn't working.

There was a funny event along the way. When I was busy trying to locate the bus stop and talking to both Elda and Aymee, Elda suddenly went “Structural and Civil Engineering!!!!!” using the tone of someone shouting “Look out there's a snake!!!”
I instinctively jumped in panic. I believe Aymee also did the same. In a second, I thought there was something really shocking, but in the end Elda was just pointing at a small board with 'Structural and Civil Engineering' text on it. Oh I get it Elda. I know you want to be an engineer that bad, but as a result my heartbeat stopped for several split milliseconds. lol :)

After two bus rides, we made it to Hollywood Boulevard. It was packed with people, although we realized it wasn't high season, unless for some people who were having spring break just like us.

Unfortunately my camera's battery drained once we got there, so Elda's camera took place.

Apparently the day before our visit, English actress Helen Mirren came to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to immortalize her footprint, handprint, and handwriting of her name on the block of cement.

Helen Mirren's footprint and handprint are still wet that they still need to be fenced.

At first Aymee was like “Why do we go this place anyway?” cos I pretty much believe that she's not an avid fan of movies. But her mode suddenly changed drastically as she spotted Arnold Schwarzenegger's handprint in Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Here are some more pictures taken in Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

It was actually the second time for me to visit Hollywood Boulevard after the previous visit which was on February 2009 with my family. At that time, Kodak Theatre was fully concealed due to the upcoming Academy Award the next day. I couldn't catch the full glimpse of the theatre, but at that moment, I was lucky enough to spot the famous giant Oscar statue in the red carpet.

But now, the Oscar's season has passed and I got to catch the full glimpse of Kodak Theatre building!!!!

During the Oscar, this entrance will be draped in red carpet and at the corner will stood a giant Oscar statue

We even took some pictures with two cosplayers posing as Zorros.

Last but not least, the other major attraction of this area is not other than the walk of fame itself. We walked along the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard only to take pictures with our favorite actors, musicians, singers, and directors. There are actually lots of picture we take here from Elda's camera, but of course I wouldn't upload all of them here.

After all this time, I always thought Madame Tussauds wax museum is only one, and that's in New York City. But I came to realize that there are actually several of them spread around the world. Hollywood included of course, since it's the capital of film industry and entertainment. Too bad we weren't able to get in due to limited time and high admission fee.

She looks very real!!

I wonder if the real Nicolas Cage is THIS tall.

I also bought myself a white tank top with famous I ♥ LA on it. The price is quite reasonable so I'm satisfied. Sorry, no picture. Too lazy to take a picture and upload it to the computer :p

Here are some more views from the famed Hollywood boulevard

In front of the Hollywood/Highland station

Hollywood Boulevard before we left for Koreatown

A rare sighting of a fancy white limo!

After spending approximately an hour in Hollywood Boulevard, we took off to the last destination: Koreatown!!!! Good thing it wouldn't take us while to go to Koreatown from where we were at that moment. Hollywood Highland Metro station was located a few feet from Kodak Theatre!

Once we got there, the sun already set, and all that we needed to do was just looking for a Korean Barbecue house for dinner. There were actually a lot of them, like spread all over the place. But we wanted to find a decent one. Too bad, the format of Koreatown wasn't like Little Tokyo. The place was merely a normal neighborhood with only everything was in Hangeul. I wish there was a good place to shop for Korean stuff, but apparently, I found none.

I tried to use my limited ability in reading Hangeul, to make sure which is a barbecue house and which is not. We almost entered a place we believed was a restaurant but apparently it was a karaoke place. The sky was getting darker so we decided to just enter the first restaurant we spotted. Finally, we found a decent Korean barbecue house: Chil Bo Myun Ok.

We were very surprised to see that it was actually a fancy restaurant! At least the price is still reasonable, according to Yelp. In fact, I felt like the three of us were the only non-Koreans and the youngest people to have dining there. The others were of course, Koreans or at least Korean speaking people, and mostly are adults who were having dinner with their colleagues.

Since it was our last night in LA, we decided to eat something really special. Honestly, the three of us were a bit clueless when it comes to Korean cuisine. No matter how often I watch Korean reality shows and dramas, still they didn't really help.

We finally asked a waitress – an ahjumma – to recommend us what course we should order. She pointed out the restaurant's bulgogi specialty and we decided to go with that.

The ahjumma even served us with free Korean egg soup or Gyeran-tang (계란탕) and dolsot bibimbap (돌솥 비빔밥). She also divided the huge portion of Bibimbap to three of us. She's really nice!!! I really wanted to say something in Korean, but the only thing I could say is just “Dolsot.” which literally means “stone pot”.

The bulgogi was absolutely goooooodddd!!!!

It was already late and it was time for us to go home. We were a bit confused to locate the nearest Metro station. When we were lost in an intersection, we bumped into a stranger. Elda collected her guts to ask the stranger where the station is, to which the stranger replied. “It's right across the intersection behind you.” (yup, our backs were facing the intersection so we didn't really pay attention what across the intersection was). It was a bit silly I know ^^".

The train that was about to take off once we got to the station was apparently the last train. Good thing we caught it on time, otherwise we needed to wait for...I don't know, tomorrow morning? I guess?

Eventually, we spent the rest of the night packing and tried to reassembled all the items we bought in LA and the clothes as well. Phiew, what a night.

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