Let's get 'gila'!

I'm writing this an hour before leaving to SFO.
Just a quick post. Yesterday, Elda, Terry, and Aymee were having quite a lunatic night to celebrate our freedom after final exams. I started off the day by having a dance final exam, which turned out to be unexpected than what my dance partner and I expected to be. We prepared the whole choreography the day before and ended up getting a worthy score! Despite our inability to compose a choreography unlike other groups.

Then, I caught up with Elda and Aymee and together, we had a lunch at Quickly across our school. Anyway, we were going to have a sleepover yesterday and had planned to cook some curry (as suggested by Terry, our dearest friend from Japan).
After the quick shopping, we went to the cinema with the purchased tickets to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

For some reasons, we were quite disappointed with the story. Won't spoil it here though.
Anyway, we went straight to my apartment, only to find out that the curry spices we bought for dinner were only for one person per serving. So in other words, we had to do nothing but decided on making an alternative choice of food, which turned out to be soup in two flavors (tomato flavored and salty flavored).
The activity resumed with us taking silly webcams together.

Then we continued the rest of the night by watching Toy Story 3. That was the first time for Terry and Elda (Aymee had returned home) watching the movie. Since Terry is a Japanese and Elda is pretty much into Japanese stuff, so you can imagine the excitement they had when they spotted Totoro in the movie. In the end, the whole Toy Story movie suddenly turned to be "Totoro hunting", as we tried as hard as we could to spot the legendary character of Ghibli studio in any scenes of the movie.



So I guess that's about it. Actually I'm writing this in my bedroom. Somehow I couldn't make it to finish the whole post prior to my departure so I decided to continue the rest here.
My journey home was EPIC! I'd definitely share it here :D

SF!!!!

This is another San Francisco story, only this time, I got to go there with Elda instead with my mom. Basically what we did were eating and visiting some interesting places we'd been to, but never got to be there together.

We took off not-so-early in the morning to catch an afternoon train. From SF train's station, we went straight to Golden Gate bridge using the same old route I used when I went there with my mom.

What's different from that day's trip to Golden Gate, I'd never walked on the bridge, ever. Despite the limited time we had in SF, Elda and I decided to take a walk along the bridge.

We also got a glimpse of the city of San Francisco from the distance.

Next up, we went to Pier 39 by bus and helped ourselves with famous Dreyer's ice cream! Yum.








Luckily enough, I also got to take more pictures of Pier 39 than before, and got to explore a place there where I'd never gone to. It was a wooden platform facing the sea. Alcatraz stood right across the platform. I'd honestly never got a view of the small island this close.







Before taking off to San Francisco train station, we spotted a huge Christmas tree in front of the entrance. Whoa, it was late November when Elda and I visited SF, and seems everyone's preparing for Christmas already.

Well, at first we were planning to visit Union Square but it was already dark and we were afraid we wouldn't be able to catch a train home, so we went straight to the station.
Finally we hit Sunnyvale train station at 10 o'clock in the evening. Quite late huh? Then we had a late dinner in Wing Stop before heading home.

Even though San Francisco and Cupertino were considerably close and only required $6.00 for round trip train's ticket, I rarely go there.
Sad huh?

Things to do in Indonesia (completed in 3 weeks, hopefully)

I may not be super overexcited about my returning to Indonesia. 3 weeks aren't a long term for a native Indonesian to spend her time in her country, therefore I have come up with a list of what to do there in three weeks:

1. Meeting my friends: high school, junior high, elementary, EF, Taiwan Guan Study Tour, even my very first best friend I've got back in kindergarten (we've been in contact via Twitter and planned to meet up).
2. Visiting my school (taking the last glimpse of the blue building before it's demolished)
3. Bus ride! Obviously no cord needed to pull there to stop the bus.
4. Sunday swimming and dancing session with my cousin
5. Teaching my cousin my new hip hop movement
6. Sushi Tei!
7. Jam session with my fellow violinists and our violin teacher
8. Going to Grand Indonesia (honestly I've never been there)
9. Going to Dufan
10. Going to Bandung (I'll either choose this or Dufan)
11. Dinner at Abuba Steak
12. Getting the taste of Indonesian food. There's a lot that I can't name them all here
13. Watching Narnia with friends
14. Relaxation massage.
15. Playing piano
16. Going to malls, obviously
17. Going to PIM on foot. Living in the US simply enables you to walk for blocks and blocks. Why not doing the same thing in Indonesia?
18. Reconciling with my daughter and granddaughters, as well as my crazy EC fellas.
19. Playing Playstation
20. Watching DVD
21. Book shopping!
22. DVD hunting!
23. Shopping in Mangga Dua!
24. New Year's eve in an exciting place
25. Taking pictures!
    
26. Seafooooood *drools* especially the one in BSD
    
27. Basically doing everything that doesn't exist in the US.

Is my demand a little too much?
:p

Perfumized!

Hi guys, how are you all doing? Anyway, I'm going home in less than a week
LESS THAN A WEEK!

My heart is constantly flip-flopping. Excited? Of course, but I still have many things to do prior to my departure, such as packing, although I don't really know what to pack aside of unused outfit, really.

Anyway, this week, Elda introduced me to a Japanese girl group called Perfume, consisting of A-chan (the youngest but she's the leader), Kashiyuka, and Nocchi. At first, their style kind of reminds me of typical Korean girl groups Wonder Girls or Kara. One thing you should know though, that Perfume specializes in Electropop instead of normal RnB dance song.
Well, the trio has an eyecatchy dance movements, like the tap dance in Nee PV and the 'walking' dance in Natural ni Koishite, as well as the eccentric video style they have in Fushizen na Girl.

The music style somehow brings me back to the good old days when I was still a huge fan of Jpop.

Check these videos out featuring my most favorite songs of theirs.

Nee (ねぇ)

Fushizen na Girl (不自然なガール)
Perfume - Fushizen na Girl (HQ)

Vezi mai multe video din muzica


Natural ni Koishite (ナチュラルに恋して)

Simply weird

Okay, got something to tell here.
Apparently, I won't be able to post my recent pictures on this blog. The thing is, the computer hasn't seemed to read my camera. I tried to refresh it and there was no way for the camera to gain an access to my computer.

With this thing occuring then I'm sorry to say that all recent documentaries have to be postponed until further notice. I gotta go back and see what's wrong with my camera :( I don't know what's wrong but let's just hope nothing really bad happening to either the camera, the computer, or the cable.

Work, camera, work! *plugging and unplugging the connection cable to the computer desperately*

Pink Attacks!

Thermal camera effect = EPIC

Notice anything new?
The whole thing turns back to pink, doesn't it? What a blast!

1. I decided to change everything back to my all time favorite color, pink. I used to have a pink layout combined with dark color scheme, but then I decided to change everything to light layout, for the sake of readers' sight.
   
   
2. Also, notice the change on the banner on top of the page? Yeah, I finally got to make a new one, and hopefully, it looks fit enough with the entire pink colored layout. That's the result of downloading Photoshop CS5 Extended version trial edition! Yeah, it's trial and it's limited only for 30 days of usage, but I guess that's enough for me to save more money for Master Collection and at least release my longing to Photoshopping in my personal computer.
   
   
3. The Cbox has been bombarded by visitors who misuses it for spamming. So I decided to delete the old one and make a new one. I was thinking to just remove the spams, but there're like bunch of them so it takes a hella time to do that. The new Cbox that I made came up with fresher look and hopefully, the color scheme that matches the layout.
   
   
4. Sometimes it makes me wonder where my readers or drop-by-ers come from. Then it came to my mind that installing Live Feedjit would be a good idea. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the widget on the right side bar, and see if your current city is listed there.
   

Yeah, so basically that's it. I'm still fond of the basic layout including the "center-text" and "side-bar" thingy.

Anyway, short yet quick news regarding college life.
This is the classes I'm definitely going to take for winter quarter.



Wondering why I scratched the 'definitely' word?

Because there's a chance for me to drop it in case I change my mind.
Hopefully, they're all fixed though. I don't want to deal with the whole tuition fee refund stuff. It takes time. Such a pain in the butt.

There are lots of class to take. Credits to obtain, even the credits taken for next quarter is more than credits I'm taking right now.
Next quarter is going to be busier than ever.

がんばってください！^^

Ma cousine est ici!

Yes!!!!
My cousin, Monika, finally got herself a personal blog, which she actually made for school project purpose.

Twirl

Doesn't her blog look sweetie? I hope she'll keep on posting.

Anyway, a bit about my cousin, she's a year younger than me, taller than me, smarter than me. She's like my own younger sister, considering I'm the only child, then I need a sister figure. Her older sister, Angel - which is my older cousin - is a few months older than me, and she's now in Australia studying architecture.
We often contact each other via Twitter, just to say hello from the northern hemisphere, spazz each other about Super Junior's Kyuhyun (our Kpop biases), or inform anything new just about anything.

Back to Monika, she actually played a major role in my Kpop world, because she's like the first person to REALLY introduce me to Super Junior. I even remember those good old days in June 2009 when she came over to my house and we laughed all day long watching Explorers of the Human Body, a hilarious Super Junior's reality show.

She's even the first to motivate me to dance.
At first, I despised dancing, so much. But then she encouraged me to join ballet jazz, and starting from there, I began to get mesmerized with the world of dancing. Even now, in college, I decided to take hip hop because of my deep love of dancing.
I know I'm not a good one, but I was always motivated by Monika for always encouraging me to dance. We always have this swimming session on Sunday morning continued by dancing session. I'm telling you, she's an awesome dancer. She can dance like three types of dances: ballet, modern, and jazz.

This early December, I'm going to perform my hip hop dance at campus for closing the quarter. I really hope she could be here to watch.

Additionally, Monika also encouraged me to join Taiwan Study Tour which I hesitated to join in the very first place due to my limitation of speaking Mandarin (Monika, on the other hand, is a fluent Chinese speaker). But then, I never regret of joining the program. My articles about my experience during the study tour wouldn't have been published to a Taiwanese newspaper nor I wouldn't have written such long and continuous Taiwan trip posts in this blog, if she hadn't had asked me to come along.

Oh by the way if you're reading this, Monika, I wanted to tell you something:
Your picture in your About Me page on your blog makes you look like a member of a Kpop girl group. You should audition for SM or JYP!! lol xD

Life at Stevens Creek Boulevard

Whoa, November...
I'll be going home in less than a month.

Frankly I have no words to describe my feeling. It's caught between sad and happy. Happy because, of course, who isn't happy coming home to your countries after months being abroad? Even though some of my friends said "Wow, you're going home this winter? So soon, you just arrived on August."

Yeah, I can totally see their points. If I could choose whether going home or staying here for Christmas, I would choose neither of them because I would choose: GOING TO NEW YORK OR LA! Or better, going to some place else where snow's falling.

Anyway, I have no special thing to discuss here. Things have been going pretty well and my friends and I are practically stuck in college life, and even more: Stevens Creek Boulevard. lol the funny thing about my life here in the US, specifically in Silicon Valley, or even more specifically in City of Cupertino.

Too bad I don't have any illustrating programs that allow me to draw the map. But I'm just going to make this simple.

Sorry for the lame editing. I meant to hand draw the map but then realized that I'm in the middle of Photoshop crisis these days. So my only saviors are Photobucket and iPhoto. What a lame amateur graphic designer T_T

On late August, after staying for less than a month in a small hotel in Sunnyvale, I was "stranded" in a very loooooong street called Stevens Creek Boulevard, which stretches from Cupertino to the city limit of San Jose. My campus is located at one end of the street (which I've never gone beyond).
Along the road are places that feed me with leisure and daily needs:

• Marina Asian market: a supermarket where my roommate and I often go for grocery shopping every week. I feel like calling this place "Xiao Taiwan" or "Little Taiwan" since it's dominated by Chinese-speaking people. The prices are reasonable as well. There's a small resto inside the supermarket. Sometimes, Elda and I would have Chinese food there at lunch (usually on Sunday, but it's getting rarer these days). But we would always have to share the portion into two regarding the supersize portion (it's impossible to devour them all for one portion, even though my appetite is considerably big). The price is well...a little pricey. About $6.00 or so.
  However, I always have to speak broken Chinese here to order the food. Speaking Chinese is recommended to get a better hospitality from the fierce-looking ladies behind the counter.
  
  
• Marukai Japanese market:
  I love going to this supermarket right after Graphic Design class with Aymee, a good friend of mine. We're both quite into Japanese stuff and food. This place is a good selection in case you want to try out making Japanese food at home. They sell quite a huge variety of Japanese vegetables and food. Oh, and they also have quick-served frozen food ranging from bento （べんと）to yakisoba（やきそば） . Anyway, my favorite one would be Beef Curry rice which costs $3.50 - one of the cheapest items among all other quick-served food. They also have Japanese cashiers, whom I've never had the gut to speak in Japanese even though it's only a quick and simple arigatou.
  
  
• Daiso: a huge store which sells Japanese items ranging from decorations to stationery located next to Marukai. Prices averagely range from $1.50. If i need to buy some cheap stuff especially stationery, I would always buy them here.
  
  
• Target: pretty explanatory. I usually would choose to buy some reasonable-priced clothing there. Located next to Marina. Pretty much they sell everything there and it's quite an amusing fact. When my friends and I got bored, we would usually go windowshopping there, or when on my Birthday, Elda and I dropped by Target to warm ourselves from the bone-piercing air outside (and it was raining at that moment). But yeah, it's windowshopping-worthy, since the items to look at aren't so bad either :)
  
  
• Chillis: a Mexican fine restaurant that serves food ranging from jalapenos to my favorite Texas cheese fries. Lately I fell for another course whose name I barely remember.
  
  
• Yoshinoya: a fast food Japanese beef bowl restaurant.
  
  
• AMC: The one and only cinema at this small town. Despite being visible from Stevens Creek boulevard, the cinema was actually located in Wolfe Road near Stevens Creek. So from the intersection of Stevens Creek and Wolfe Road, we have to walk a bit further to the cinema.
  On the spot ticket: $8.00.
  Book tickets prior to the showing day: $6.00.
  This cinema is different from cinemas in Indonesia. In Indonesia, we would usually have the usher standing outside the showing theatre entrance, but here, the usher (one person only) would usually stand outside the cinema's entrance, which enables movie watchers to switch movies without having to buy another ticket (I'm not promoting illegal stuff or anything, but that's the truth!). So yes, actually, $8.00 is only meant for one movie showing, despite the fact that you can actually switch movies right after finishing one movie. This is considered illegal though :p
  
  
• Cupertino City Center: it's actually where AMC is located. But the mall is quite inactive so we rarely go there, only for watching movies though.
  
  
• Pasha's Market: a small Hindi mini market that surprisingly sells Indonesian Indomie at a very low price!
  
  
• Seven Eleven: located just next to my apartment. I commonly go there through a connecting door from my apartment.
  
  
• My friend's residences: They reside in apartments along the road of Stevens Creek, or at least, on the road near Stevens Creek. At least it doesn't take long to go from Stevens Creek to their residence.
  
  
• McD: People can't live without this. Period. Good thing it's located just two blocks away from my apartment
  
  
• El Pollo Loco:
  
  A Mexican fast food restaurant. Loving the flame grilled chickens and mashed potatoes as the side dish!
  
  
• Panda Express:
  
  A famed Chinese fast food restaurant with price ranging from $6.00 to $8.00 near school. My favorite dish: brocolli beef and black pepper chicken.
  
  
• Whole Foods:
  
  A supermarket near school just like Safeway
  
  
• Ariake Sushi: Okay, it's not comparable to Sushi Tei, but well, it's the only real Japanese restaurant I could ever find along Stevens Creek.
  
  
• Valley Fair: The only mall located a bit far from my apartment, but still on Stevens Creek. It's a bit quiet mall with branded stores. In case I have a problem with my laptop, I would usually go to Apple store there for costumer's service
  
  
• Santana Row:
  
  
  
  
  
  It's a convenient city walk right across Valley Fair. I'd rather go to this place due to the outdoor vibe and it just looks more sophisticated (considering that I'm a bit bored going to the mall, I mean, they have lots of mall in Jakarta!). They have Borders bookstore there, which I'm glad to have had the discount card which opens wider opportunity for me to buy more books. Pinkberry yoghurt is also located there, and it's a nice place with wooden verandah in front of it to chill on the weekend while munching on yoghurts. Along the streets of Santana Row are even more branded stores compared to Valley Fair, like Gucci (gah, my friend's mom works there! I've entered the store once and hoped that I could exit it carrying a huge bag with a Gucci text on it), H&M, and many more
  
  
• Safeway: A supermarket I'd choose to go to in case I get bored going to Marina. Since the target consumers are aimed mostly on Americans, the prices there are a bit more expensive...
  
  
• Marshall: A megastore like Target but it's just that they don't have groceries or anything food-related there. But they have a great deal of clothing items there.
  
  
• Barnes and Nobles:
  
  Yes, there's one at Stevens Creek. A huge bookstore indeed. But I rarely go there. I go to Borders even more often.
  

So basically those are places that my friends and I often go to, all along the road of Stevens Creek Boulevard. Anyway, there are some other interesting places yet they're out of this road, which is quite impossible to go to every day or every week (the bus, ahem, you have to switch buses)

• San Francisco:
  
  
  Duh
  You know the reason why I put those pictures above.
  
  
• In-N-Out Burger:
  
  Located at El Camino Real. Their burger portions are so effin' huge!!!
  
  
• T-Mobile service center: Who knows my roommate and I might have a problem with our phone provider.
  
  
• Caltrain station: the closest one is in Sunnyvale. I usually go to San Francisco from this station.
  
  
• Hankook Korean Supermarket:
  
  Its layout is almost like Marina Food Market and Marukai Japanese Supermarket, but as you can tell, it's dominated with Korean products and Korean people. But likely Marina Food Market, it's got a small restaurant inside it which has a super duper delicious Dolsot Bibimbap (돌솥 비빔밥) for about $9.00. Yeah I know, it's pricey but it's quite worth it :D
  Yeah it's just too bad it's not on Stevens Creek :(. I have to take two buses to reach it.
  
  
• Castro Street:
  
  A good place to hang out with many restaurant along its rows and not to mention, a music store that sells my favorite violin case yet I never got to buy up until this point *brb cries at the corner*

So yeah, basically that's a bit of my life that revolves around this long road of Stevens Creek Boulevard. Anyway I picked up a metaphor that would depict my life in the US: it's like an iron, going back and forth from my apartment to school or just going along the street and stopping at one of those places above. When I finally get to get out of Stevens Creek Boulevard, it feels kind of overwhelming, because after all this time, my life in the US always depends on this long street. Getting out of the street even though it's just going to a nearby road out of it, it feels like I get to see the other side of America. Ironic, isn't it?

But well, on the other hand, living in a place where there's only one long street that feeds you and your everyday life gives such an advantage. Along this street, one of the buses commonly seen to be operating is Bus 23.
So we just have to take that bus to go to all places located in the street. It's quite strategic.
At least you don't have to switch buses to go to the supermarket or if you want to go grab some Japanese food for lunch.

Images are credit to:
Google.com

Mysterious much?

Like I promised to you before, I was going to post something about my journey to Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz with my friends, and now is the chance.

Actually, it was an old event, exactly three days before the Fall term began. The idea of going to Mystery Spot (I had no idea what place that was) was initiated by Astha. She was so excited to visit that place that she encouraged me, Elda, and some of her friends from India to join in the trip with her. From what I'd learned from Mystery Spot, it was an uncanny place with a so-called strange magnet field. It is said if we stand straight on its ground, it'd look like if we stood leaning sideways.

Interested by that idea, Elda and I decided to join.

The day started when Elda, Astha, and I met up at Valley Fair mall. After a quick breakfast with McD, Astha told us that today, one of the trip's participants (one of her friends as well) was celebrating his birthday. So she bought for him four cupcakes and we were expected to wish him a happy birthday.

Okay, originally four cupcakes. But Astha asked us to eat the extra one aka smallest first

The challenging yet interesting thing is, that friend came from India, and we were expected to wish him a happy birthday in Hindi. In that language, Happy Birthday is "Janam deen mubarak ho". Elda and I practiced the phrase together until we sounded as fluent as real Hindi, with Astha as our guides as we kept on muttering it on the way to the bus stop (where we would meet the birthday guy and his friends).

It was probably the most awkward meeting ever since Elda and I hadn't ever met him yet. Elda and I held the birthday cake as Astha pointed which one the birthday guy was. We went on "Janam deen mubarak ho!" while handing him the cupcake box.

Stunned? Pretty sure he was. lol.
Anyway, there were four guys coming to join us. They were: Yash (the birthday guy), Milan, Anooj, and Pratiek.

So there started our journey to Santa Cruz. The journey took a while since it was quite far to get from Cupertino to Santa Cruz. First we needed to get on 23 bus to the intersection of San Antonio and Bird. Then we took a nonstop Amtrak bus from the intersection directly to Santa Cruz.

The Amtrak arrived shortly after we got off the 23 bus and trust me, it was the most convenient public bus I'd ever got on so far in the US, especially since it got a free wifi inside it. But the bus was fully packed with people going to Santa Cruz so my friends and I had to sit in different seats. :(
Anyway, we got off at the first intersection after the bus exited the highway. After taking a rest for a while in a small restaurant at the corner of the road, I switched on my Mr. Google map device to get the direction to the Mystery Spot.

The device said that the intersection we got off was the closest we could get to the site, and the rest of the path, we had to walk for like five miles. It was friggin' far, in case you don't know.

This is the road we walked all the way from the busy intersection to the rural side. Not a boring walk, since our sights were refreshed by this exciting panoramas. We even stopped for a moment or two to take pictures.

Yay! We were almost there!

The entrance to the Mystery Spot was a narrow slope. Cars still could access through it though.
Walking to the entrance didn't take a while, but as soon as we got there, we realized how much energy we'd spent for the long walk we took. We possibly had to call a cab to get back to the intersection after finishing a tour in that tourist attraction.

Anyway, good thing Elda and I saved the burgers we bought in McD for lunch, because that was when we felt extremely hungry and there were hardly no food stalls all around. We took a rest for a moment before buying the tickets (which was only $5.00! Even though it might sound pretty pricey for you, it's actually considered quite cheap for a tourist's attraction admission fee).

Then all we had to do was just waiting until our tour number was summoned, and that eventually happened sooner.

The tour guide led us into the location of the so-called "Mystery Spot" and performed some demonstrations. It's kind of hard to explain here, but the demonstration basically revolves around the strangeness that surrounded the place.

In short, there was this demonstration where two people were to stand facing each other. One stood beyond the border of "Mystery Spot" and another one inside the "Spot". Their heights constantly changed when they switched positions, even though the platform they were stepping on was flat.

Soon we walked all the way up and entered a leaning cabin. It sort of reminded me with Rumah Miring at Dufan.
I have a picture of me standing straight but it looked like I was leaning. Anyway, Elda's picture is better, which shows a good example of what I'm talking about. Mine is a bit blurry

We made a group picture taken by this nice tour guide.

Pretty much, we took pictures in the cabin and saw the amazement of the tourist attraction. It was a short tour and we were to return back to our starting point and were given out stickers and merchandises.
Before we left the site, we asked the tour guide to once again take a picture of us standing on this uncanny platform.

The tour guide told us to stand like below, and took a picture of the formation. He told us to see it and see if we something odd enough

It wasn't like really amazing or something that simply could make your jaw drop. So I'd say $5.00 as the fee was equal to the attraction it offered. No wonder it wasn't so expensive.

The boys then gave up on walking back to the intersection and especially the sun was about to set. So we decided to call two cabs to take us to the intersection, where we would switch to Amtrak bus heading back to San Jose.

On the way back to San Jose, suddenly Yash informed both Elda and I that he invited us to his birthday dinner at Pizza Hut near school. Elda and I hesitated at the offer once, thinking his friends might mind about us there. But Yash and Astha convinced us that we were very much welcomed for his dinner and they promised would talk in English instead of Hindi.

At the same time, Astha wanted to buy some tickets for tomorrow's Step Up 3D for the her and the boys (I'm not really into Step Up, so I decided not to join them). Anyway, Elda and I accompanied Astha to AMC Cinema while the boys went up to Pizza Hut first to make the reservation.

Then, from AMC, we caught up with them there and once we got there, the pizzas were already served.
So we had a great time munching on our pizzas. Astha happened to bring up the topic about our countries, and the boys uttered that they were interested about Indonesia. So here Elda and I exuberantly explained about all great stuff we should boast about our country. We did that as requested though.

Well, we called it the day shortly after and returned to our apartment.