Give Thanks (Pt 2)

THANKSGIVING DAY
The next day, Jessica and I met up to see Frozen in the afternoon in AMC Santa Anita. Seeing it was Thanksgiving, we thought the cinema would at least have less people than the other days, but instead, it was PACKED with families and children.

Of course they were there to see one of the most awaited Disney flicks other than Monsters University. Even more, it's a Disney's fairytale movie that was said to be the best one since Beauty and the Beast. Come on, who's not down for it?

Give Thanks (Pt 1)

This might be the last post for me before I have to prepare for finals. It's week 13 y'all!!!! As I mentioned last time that I'm not going out of town for Thanksgiving. Some people do but I choose to stay in LA since some of my friends from the Bay Area came to visit.

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PRE-THANKSGIVING

The first dinner that started my Thanksgiving break started slightly roughly for me, not that bad but it shifted a bit out of the plan: on Wednesday late afternoon, I was still having a class. It was an individual critique day where students put their names on the list and took turns for the critique with the professor. Unlike last week, I got to the campus earlier than I thought and I managed to get the earliest critique time as possible (I was the fifth out of 15 students in total). So I finished and wrapped up quickly at 3.30 pm and decided to chill a bit with my friends, as well as making some corrections according to the crit I had.

TWO AND ONE

Another post in less than 2 days! Ta-daaa... Okay, I swear this is going to be my last post about my birthday, and afterwards, we'll talk about other things. Well, to tell you the truth, other than my birthday, there isn't so much going on: just homework and hanging out with my friends.

Anyway, my birthday was a blast!! I thought it was going to be plain since my life in Art Center isn't as lavish as any other university life, nor my previous life in community college. I was still struggling with my homework on my birthday eve. I worked my butt off past midnight and it took me a while to realize that that day was my birthday. Anyway, here are a couple of highlights from the day I turned legal.

Indonesia for the Break!

How is everybody doing? I'm glad I finally got to write another post, and even better, from my own hometown!!! Sorry for the lack of post for the past month. I've been slain by projects, finals, and moving. Moving after finals was a pain, especially knowing that your other friends headed home to pass out on their beds after the last day of finals while you were on your way to Uhaul to pick up a moving truck.

Unproductive Weekend

I had to say that last weekend is probably the most unproductive weekend of my entire Art Center history. I usually worked on my homework over the weekend, or at least on Sunday (Sunday is my homework day yay). But forget about last weekend. All I did was chilling, hanging out, eating, and sleeping - it might sound like something most of us do in spare time.

On Friday, after working on Materials homework, Irene, Han, and I had a dinner in Savoy Kitchen. It's a Chinese restaurant in Alhambra widely known for its Hainan Chicken Rice. It feels good to finally get a taste of it after a while not eating it. This particular good has always been one of my favorites back in Indonesia, and everytime I travel to Singapore, I always have this for almost every meal.

By the way, excuse the picture quality. I've been taking pictures using my crappy Blackberry camera feature.

Sizzlin'

I'm glad that the semester kicked off pretty well for me. I got to make new friends and managed my workload pretty well, even though at some points procrastination just had to come to play.

This semester, I surprisingly met a lot more Indonesian students at my school this semester. Some are even students who started at the same term as I did, but I never got a chance to meet them. Before the semester even started, I met two new Indonesian students while I was doing peer mentor - one guy and one girl. How I became acquainted with them was pretty awkward though, since whenever I spotted them around, I couldn't help but to strongly assume that they're Indonesians just from seeing their faces. This was proven true when they finally got to speak Bahasa with each other while I was nearby.

Indonesian students at my school are pretty much all over the place, but we never flop at one spot in the cafeteria and chat with a super loud voice from across the room (sounds like people that I know?). So you get to imagine what it's like to find one among the haystack of Art Center community, and you can finally let your tongue loose by speaking your native language :)

SP 13: The Other Side of LA - Pt 1

This part of spring break happened on the brink of Summer term, exactly three last days of the break and a week after Universal Studios visit with Eunyoung

I might have mentioned this but Elda and I originally planned on going on Chicago, but then something happened and I wasn't able to go to Chicago anymore. In solution to that, Elda decided to come to LA to pay me a visit.

Elda would be coming on May 10, 2013 at noon. I was ready to pick her up after my spring break work, but then the managing director of Graphic Design department requested that I attend the departmental orientation to share some tips for the new students. And that happened at noon. I only came in the beginning before leaving to LAX to pick Elda up at around 12.30 pm.

For your information, that was actually the first legit day of me driving on freeways on my own. I don't usually have enough balls to take freeways and as an alternative for that, I always take local routes, which sometimes can be a solution to the jam in freeway, but it commonly takes more time than freeways. Or sometimes, I drive in freeways with a companion.

SP 13: Back to the Studios - Pt 2

Previously: When Eunyoung agreed she'd like to go to Universal, this ride was the first thing that came to mind, especially the night before, Aymee told me how awesome the ride was (she went there on Christmas break). On the way to where the Transformers ride was, we bumped into the directory board where it says that the wait time for Transformerswould take up until an hour.

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Screw it. I could barely sleep last night because of the high anticipation of Transformers.

The directory board never lies, and when I said it, I mean it, because the line really took almost an hour. The line went through endless rooms, before we finally came to a narrow basement where the loading station was. YEEAYY!!

OMG, I'm not kidding, the ride was FUDGING AWESOME!! It wasn't as short as I expected so the long wait really pays off. It was totally unexpected. I thought it would be like a normal motion simulator ride where the cart just stayed there and the technical arms did the job. But no, it was a dark ride, like the one you commonly see in Disneyland, unless there were no traditional animatronics, but instead, we were taken to rooms full of giant screens and each screen has its own narrative. And of course, everything was in 3D...no, 4D! Considering there were some special effects happening, stuff like warm heat, water effects, wind blowing sort of thing. But I was completely left speechless. I've never seen such technology in any theme park rides before. The idea was not as complicated, but combining the idea of 4D motion simulator and dark ride is just GENIUS.

Eric is Here!

Kids, what do we do two weeks before finals?

We...

This is probably one of the greatest guilty pleasure ever. Okay, this is the second greatest guilty pleasure after I lied to my high school faculty that I went to LA for a week to have an appointment with my future university.

The fact is, I went there for *duh* vacation.

Unified Diversity Soup

Surprised to see the new layout? Took me like 2 days to finish it off. But yay, I'm satisfied because I finally did something out of Illustrator and it turns out to be a vector art :D

Plus, slab serif is love!

Anyway, you remember that I mentioned about Julie and Julia movie yesterday, don't you? I became quite inspired by it and the fact that I finally resumed blogging is because of it. But it wasn't just it. Yesterday, I decided to restrain my craving of L&L's Loco Moco and cook instead. This time though, I was going to make a documentary out of it. This recipe is nothing new to me, but I thought I'd share it with you, especially if you happen to be busy college students who don't want to spend money for take-outs but you have left-over ingredients.

Mini Spring Break

Hey guys,

Guess what motivates me back to blogging. I just saw this movie Julie and Julia, in which one of the characters is a writer that frequently blogs about her cooking experience based on Julia Child's recipes. That was enough to get me back to writing in my blog.

The first week of break is over and I spent most of it traveling out of Socal. As I mentioned, I made two trips to Bay Area. The first trip includes a visit to San Francisco, and the second visit includes going to Davis, Sacramento, and even traveling back to South Bay (San Jose and Cupertino), which I considered very much as my second home. Now that it's already the second week and I've been spending my time at home, trying to do something active, like building a portfolio website. But then I realized I'm still a third term graphic design student and a professional portfolio website is still way not compatible to my designing skill as of now. So yeah, I'm going back to Behance.

Eyebags Eyebags

Hey guys!!

I finally got to post again! Glad finals are over, phiew. I'm going back to Indonesia today but I haven't done so much on packing. The thing is, I just finished my finals yesterday, on Saturday, whereas everyone has wrapped up on Friday. Sad ey?

Actually, I wrapped all my studio finals on Thursday, which is actually earlier than everyone else. My other friends still had a project critique up until Friday evening. However, sadly for us, graphic majors especially first termers, we all had to take a test for our online class. The test were open from Thursday to Saturday noon. As predicted, most of us weren't ready to take it early, so even some, including me, had to wait all the way to Saturday morning to take it.

spring break frenzy

First of all, I'd like to wish you a very...

Just thought I'd like to take a break from writing "Orlando for Winter" :)

The graphic I made this time was quite lame. I tried my best to create an egg on Illustrator only to find out I failed to do so *doublelame*

Hope you guys had a great Easter! I wish I had some real eggs to decorate here, but apparently they have gone rotten so I had to dispose them (did that a while ago).

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So you might probably remember a post that I did previously about me staying here in the Bay Area for spring break for a week, while a lot of people I knew fled out of state for vacation. Well, it looks like my break wasn't as boring as I thought it would be. Although not as satisfying as winter break, I definitely had a good time during spring break and most importantly, I had never saved as much money like I did in other breaks, so that adds to the point.

In exchange of not traveling anywhere, I (sorta) "warned" my parents that most expenses for a week would be on food, clothing, and movies. I ended up rewarding myself after an exhausting quarter with bunch of food, a pair of new clothing, a good book to read, two movies, and a quality time of blogging :)

Yep, I bought The Hunger Games!!!
I felt so tempted to read the book after seeing the movie. The movie was unexpectedly good, although I heard a couple of my friends said it sucked. I was totally blown away by Katniss' character and her upbringing delivered by Jennifer Lawrence. The whole atmosphere and cinematography also successfully drew character into the situation the characters were involved in. Sooo...intense. I'm definitely looking forward to finishing the book.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

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I wish I could show my new clothing, but too bad I don't have that particular "fashion blogger" quality. Anyway, I spent some time at H&M and Forever 21 buying myself a new hot pink shirt with a string (more like a belt) attached around the waist, a floral dress (a super duper very rare occasion for me to buy a casual dress, but then I remember that I might need one for summer or spring), and a jeans jacket that matches with the dress.

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Moving on to the food!! Ah, here comes my favorite part of all spring break time. Aside from my extreme liking on food, my goal by the end of the break is to at least gain a pound of weight since I'm a little underweight. Oh how hard is it to gain weight? -_-

Tenma Ramen is one of the most awaited food I'd been dying to have ever since spring break starts. This authentic Okinawa ramen is rich of garlic flavor, making it so undeniably luscious.

After seeing 21 Jump Street with ISV folks, the remaining of us went to Harumi Sushi to munch on 65 sushi rolls. Yes, you got it right. Sixty-five rolls for five people. That's hella a lot.


Chicken Curry with Rice after 3 hours of playing badminton! Had this at Tandoori Chicken. I got to say that the rice was not as tasty as I thought it'd be, but the curry was absolutely mouthwatering.



Grilled chicken with fried potatoes and mushroom sauteed with Cajun Sauce!
I don't quite recall the full name of the food, but I believe it's one of the signature food at Applebees.



Pho with Beef and Soft Tendons at Downtown Mountainview.
I'm never quite a fan of this Vietnamese noodle soup, but whenever I'm hungry, I can never resist this dish!


Sauteed Chicken Marsala at Elephant Bar.
It's a you-pass-it-everyday kind of restaurant, but who knows the food can be so promising?


I had beef and tofu rice at Top Cafe right after playing at Golfland with some friends of mine, an activity that finally concludes my whole spring break event.

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So the rice plate wraps up my simple spring break! I know I expected much than just culinary tour and shopping: I wished to travel out of state (been saying this for hundredth time now), but on the bright side, at least I got to save some money for my future needs and especially university tuition :)

See you in a bit. Spring quarter starts tomorrow and I need to get enough sleep to slam early morning class :)

Dear appetite...

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 1: Delicacies!

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 5: School visit

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 ^^

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!

Jakarta Pt 3: Eid Mubarak!

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.