The Norm of Being Blunt

One time, I was doing groceries in LA like every other weekend. I was going to get a can of pesto sauce on the other end of the aisle. Not feeling like dragging the cart all way to the other end, I left it on one side while walking all the way down for the pesto. It was then I heard a lady shouting. "Whose cart is this? Miss, is this yours?" I nodded. The lady threw me a firm gaze and told me not to leave it unattended as it was dangerous. I had a spitting thought of “So what? That's my cart. You've nothing to do with it.” but instead, i was flustered and begrudgingly walked to my cart, not to leave it ever again.

That case was one out of many things I encountered while living in US for years. Simply put, Americans are so blunt! In a good way. But this then-timid Indonesian student was so shocked when someone walked by to compliment her shoes or jacket. Or the other day I was having my loads of items scanned at the register at Target, and the cashier went “Oooh are you having a party tonight? By the way I love this noodle brand. Great choice!” Should this happen in Indonesia, you'd be suspecting the cashier might be developing a chronic nosy symptom. Should the scenario unfold here, we'd take it skeptically and be like “So, why do you want to know? You think you're getting invited? You're way inside my personal space so fuck off.”

Jakarta Pt 4: Evening Snack

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!

New Look!

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!

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！^^

Hollaback!

It's been a while. So hello guys!!! Yes, finally I'm back blogging with the fresh new layout courtesy of DeluxeTemplates.net. Just decided to change the layout since I'm pretty bored with the previous yet customized Minima Black. A little change would do, wouldn't it? I long for bright, more professional looking layouts, so that's why.

Um...actually I have loads of things to share to y'all, like some more new stories plus the pictures. But since I don't have lots of time blogging right now, maybe I'm going to post more about my latest activities in details later on. The point is, I've been really busy nowadays that I could hardly handle my small graphic designing business. This whole other kind of 'business' I had was a bit too distracting and even nowadays I'm mostly not at home.

This week has been the busiest so far. Last Friday, my friend and I went to Setiabudi building for some movie day. Started out with DVD hunting which took place in a small DVD store. I ended up buying three of them :)

And yesterday, I attended Dian Sastro's wedding. Yes, that actress. My uncle got invited but he was abroad, so my aunt and cousins decided to represent him by attending the posh wedding party. We were like completely strangers to the actress, her husband, her family, and to attendees there. I'll post the story later with sadly-low quality pictures.

Today, I took a Binus International Entrance Test for Batch 7, likely it was the last batch. The test wasn't bad. Since I aimed for Art and Design major, I was required to take three tests which consist of: drawing test, entrance test (boy, the Math was bloody hard), and an interview.

I'm still not so sure whether I'm going abroad or not. If I get accepted to Binus, I'll probably cancel all my studying abroad plans, and if not, then I'll go to the US. Still, I'll cross my fingers, since Binus is said to have the best Art and Design major in Jakarta. I pity the fact that state universities don't have the major I exactly wanted to take.

Holiday's still so loooooongg....

But I do have some travel plans.

Later on June, I'm going to Taiwan with my cousin for a homestay. This is confirmed. To be honest I don't know much interesting places there. Hopefully the tour is promising so I'll get excited about it :)

My mom's planning to go to New York with her sisters. Her sisters are going to pay for the trip and they kind of asked me to join it too.

NEW YORK!!!! ONE OF THE CITIES I'D KILL TO GO TO!!!!

That's after Seoul, Tokyo, Scotland, London, and Paris :)

My mom's effin' lucky. If only the graduation and prom were held earlier than June, say like this May, I would probably join the trip. I'm really in the mood of traveling now, well, wherever the destination is. My first purpose would be finding good objects to be snapped in a picture, and speaking of New York, I could imagine myself taking a picture of its skyline and skycrapers....

Okay, so that's my mom's travel plan. As for me, I'm still stuck with the whole Taiwan homestay thing. Gotta learn more Chinese.

Also, I'm planning to go to Singapore. My aunt's staying there at the moment. Maybe I'll leave next week on my own. But I'm still not sure about that. Hopefully some of my friends will be there and thus we can hang out together or probably go to UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!!

Enough with chit chat tonight. Still have some more videos to watch now. Ciao!

What would you think about...

Hey guys, there's a poll up on the left sidebar. Yes, I'm thinking about changing my layout. Possibly you've been bored about reading in the dark layout with all bright texts and wish for a light layout instead. Please let me know if you're uncomfortable. But if you're comfortable enough and want me to keep on blogging in this layout, that'd be alright :). Probably I'll be doing little layout changing like changing the pink colors to something else more exciting, and the banner too.

Anyway, please do vote for the layout, though one day, I wish I could make my own layout like the ones in Bloggertemplates.com and such. That'd be really great, yeah :D

NEW DOMAIN!!

www.thebigescapades.co.nr

No, I don't move this blog to any other host.
Just a new domain! But still on the same old Blogspot address!

So you can access my blog from either the Blogspot address or the new domain!
Though the new domain is much more recommended since it's easier for the access