Year of the Horse

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!

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

Winter Trip - Frankenmuth

The day after the long walk to Boba Island, complete with our feet getting ached and soaked, Aymee planned on going to Frankenmuth. I've never heard of Frankenmuth until the day before our departure. I was unaware with what else Michigan had to offer, and that would be Frankenmuth. According to Aymee, who knew that place from Ashley who hasn't even been there either, Frankenmuth is a small German town located about 20-40 miles from Ann Arbor.

Getting there by public transportation such as buses would be possible, seeing Frankenmuth really is a small town and quite isolated too. It's not one of the big cities in Michigan, such as Detroit or Ann Arbor. Getting there would require a taxi, and that was what we were planning.

Thank you 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014

____________________________________________________

Wishing you a great and blessed year ahead.

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.

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

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.

Happy 484th Birthday, Hometown

I'm listening to this unusually chill Indonesian jazz song on Friday night and I found out today, according to Indonesian time (June 22), is anniversary of the founding of Jakarta.

 


That's a coincidence right? Anyway, I think this song tries to depict Jakarta in a more romantic way (the way Paris is often associated as the city of romance) but it pays quite an inaccurate tribute to the city itself. Drinking champagne? That doesn't sound like what typical Jakarta people would do. Maybe only those Jakarta bourgeoisies people would do that. What about inhaling carbon monoxide from Metro Mini's exhaustion pipes, which is crucial but people don't give a shit about? And what about the facts that crossing pedestrians are barely visible to passing drivers? 

That sounds more like Jakarta.

So dear Mr. Jokowi, I have high hopes on you. You already make a good impression as a well-respected high figure with humble personality, so I hope that lives up to your duty as well as the governor of Jakarta :)

...which ironically barely happened on my campus, or at least in my class, since everyone became stressed out due to the hard critic almost all of us got in type class.

Home for Thanksgiving!

Guess where I am...
Yes, I'm in San Francisco Bay! Glad to be back home. Even though this is not literally my home, I always thought SF Bay is. Yeah, I'll be spending 3 days 2 nights here for Thanksgiving. It might not sound like a long holiday compared to yours. I still had a class on Wednesday evening, which is sad, right? While my roommates and even my other friends are already off for Thanksgiving break.
Right now I'm in SFO airport, waiting for my mom's friend to pick me up and also taking some time to check out the available class schedule for my next term. Sadly, the schedule doesn't look so good as of now. Most of them only have two classes and one type of class clashes with another. Hm, I might want to talk this over with my advisor. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the not-so-long break! Let's put the school matter aside for a moment!!  YOLO! At least I'm hoping it'll give me some time to rest from my daily all-nighters. Also, Elda will be here shortly!
Turkey, anyone?

Midnight Workout

A couple of days ago, I was invited by the ISV members to come to campus' quarterly event, Storm the Night Dance. The event took place on Friday, June 8, and I didn't decide on going until my friends dragged me to it. Well, I thought, why not? I came to the similar occasion two quarters ago, and everything should be the same as it was. For a note, I'm not a party-goer. I don't go to clubs and dance till morning, but well, I do sometimes love to step on the dance floor...with the condition: no alcohol.

The preparation for Storm the Night Dance was considerably sudden for me, as I looked up for the dress a few hours before the party commenced, meanwhile most of my friends already got all the stuff they'd been planning to wear since a week ago. I strolled in Valley Fair on my own and finally my attention was hooked on a simple, mini black dress with a black rose embroidery on the left shoulder, complete with a belt.

ISV people were supposed to gather around in Lynn's place before leaving to the venue (which was at school) at 9.00 pm, but apparently we spent too much time on make-up. Only the girls though. The guys were patiently waiting outside lol.

I left with Agnes, Catfish, and Lynn. It was 9.45 pm when we took off and we still needed to pick up Van who lives in Sunnyvale. I know, we were super late for the party and we only had two more hours to have fun before the committee had to wrap it up.

Time to have some fun!
Basically I'm just going to post the pictures and maybe put captions on some of them.

ISV forms a dance circle yeah!

Later on, I met my two Indonesian friends, Jessica and William, who were apparently surprised to see me in this kind of occasion. At one point, some random guy led the entire invitees to dance along with him, kind of like a mass aerobic session. The movements reminded Jessica, William, and me of poco poco dance. Weirdly enough, three of us tried to demonstrate the poco poco dance out of randomness to see if it was similar enough with the dance being led at that time. YOLO.

DAT GAZE!

Barefeet girls!

Our feet ached from jumping on heels!

When we took our heels off and stepped on the wet grass in the chilly night...

IT WAS SO DARN COLD!!!

*seriously I felt my feet were temporarily frozen

Koosha and Cynthia are having so much fun!
(btw, oh hi Erin...*the guy in the back*)

 

By the way, at one point during the dance, two strange boys came up to me and tried to have some talk with me. One of them whispered to another in a pause, sort of asking him what to ask me. I was so dumb not to realize immediately that they were actually hitting on me and the hints are as follows:

1. One of them asked me where I got the glowing neon bracelet. I told him to go to the welcome booth at the entrance, but he hesitated to go. I kind of sensed he actually wanted ME TO WALK HIM THERE. dafudge
2. The same guy asked “Do you have a boyfriend?” I had to say I did so that he didn't hit on me any longer. However, he continued “Are you married?” The fudge dude are you high or something?
3. The other guy asked “Hey my friend right here doesn't have a date tonight. Do you want to dance with him?” I refused, of course. HELL NO.
4. When I was about to turn to my friends, one of them stopped me from doing so, saying “Hold on, why are you going to your friends when you have us?” Four words to both of you gentlemen. Go poo your self. Or at least your common sense.

Good thing one of my Indonesian friends came up and handed me the camera (yeah, while I was being interrogated by these two strange guys, my friend borrowed the camera, which might explain why I wasn't on some of the pictures). Weirdly, my friends didn't help me to get away from those guys because they thought those guys were MY FRIENDS.lol

Anyway, I asked my Indonesian friend to distract me and take me away from them. Thank you so much for saving me from these weirdos!

Apparently, I wasn't the only victim. Some of my friends later told me that they bumped into the same guys and explained that they were in their drunken state in the party (despite the event itself prohibits any forms of alcohol). Those guys must have drunken heaps of liquors before entering the party.

Anyway, no more complaints. Let's have some more fun!

Mona and Chika! Two kawaii Japanese girls!

Not sure what Luna tried to do to Channon by placing her hand on his back

The staircase family, with Eric the tallest among all

The party went on and it came to an end at 12. Some people begged the DJ to play some more songs, but once it ends, it couldn't be continued any further. This is not a club in the end. This is a school event, and everything had to go according to its schedule.

So yeah, no encore. Bummer...

The girls I mentioned earlier and I tiptoed all the way to Agnes' car barefeet. We were planning to go to Zoey's house for an afterparty, but the party at Agnes' car was supposed to drop by at Ihop to buy something to eat during the afterparty, while I guess the other party should be buying drinks.

Zoey's house was packed with more than I expected. The later the night got, the more people came to chill and have fun. Some people decided to play some silly game, while I was enjoying myself playing playstation with the other party (I actually played Naruto, which is strangely fun). By the time I needed to go home, the boys switched the game to Winning Eleven. Sometimes, life's totally unfair... -_-

Well, I had a great time overall that night. Yeah, if only I didn't have driving lesson the next day, I would love to stay overnight with a dozen of people in one room.

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.

cooling our heads

Okay, this story is a bit out of date, but I decided to just post it here since it's too hard to forget.
On late August (don't remember the exact date) I was invited by a friend of mine who comes from China, to attend a fellowship event. Elda and I also joined in the trip, with a little confidence and was quite assured that the whole event would be conducted in Chinese, since most of the participants come from Chinese speaking countries.

So here goes the event. It started with a visit to Santa Cruz. We carpooled from DeAnza college to Los Gatos first, stopping by a decent house to have a glass of orange juice, then went straight to Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz might not sound that strange to me, but the thing is, I had exactly no idea where that was, whether it was close or not to Cupertino.
Anyway, it was a good place though. In fact, a fascinating one. I've never been to any beaches in America not until that visit. Obviously it look different from Indonesian beaches, especially minus the seaside-counters-and-sellers part.

I met some new friends! Terri, my Japanese-born friend, and Sierra, who comes from Hong Kong

We had a group picture together. Can you spot me there?

Then we had a beach walk on our own. I felt like wearing the wrong dress-code (gah, there's no dress code by the way) since I attended the outing wearing a semi-formal checkered outfit, jeans, and sneakers, without knowing that we were actually going to the beach ><. If only I had found out, then I would probably wear shorts, Tshirt, and a pair of sandals.
The water was freakishly cold! In contrast of the hot weather and burning sand! So you can imagine me running confidently into the water then practically flinched when the water met my feet.













By seeing the pictures above, at least you get the picture of referred beach I'm talking about.
Right after a beach walk, we happened to spot that the beach itself was connected to a nearby small theme park called Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Before entering the theme park from the beach, we had to pass like rows of shop. Nothing interested me though, so I just kept on moving.

Anyway, I thought this theme park required every of its visitor to pay for the admission fee, but turned the entrance didn't have any ticket boxes so visitors could roam freely inside the theme park. BUT there was actually one ticket box in the middle of the theme park. So it turned out that we did have to pay for $3.00 or $4.00 per ride. We didn't need to ride all of rides though, but if we wished too, just go to the ticket box and requested your desired ride. The lady would hand you the ticket after you pay.

Piece of cake huh?







Doris was ecstatic about riding on some rides, but maybe one ride is enough since our time being in the theme park was obviously limited. Actually Doris was excited about riding on this pendulum-like ride, but she hesitated to go on her own (since all of us had this gut to ride the ride along with her). So we switched to another not-so-gentler ride which is Speed bump (boom boom car)



After spending quality yet fun time at Santa Cruz, we headed back to Los Gatos for barbecue time. Anyway before having dinner, we had some games to break the ice. The game was a bit hilarious but it kind of challenged the heck out of our memories to memorize everyone's name there.



After the game, we had a dinner. The host was kind enough to provide food ranging from spaghetti, chicken, to sushi. What a comforting yet warm food in the contrary of the cold weather and the blowing wind. The rest of the night was spent with some more games but this time, it was conducted fully in Chinese, so there was no way I could join in.







Spent the rest of the night watching religious videos in the living room and the goals of the organization. The host also thanked for us all for coming to her house though



An impressive night indeed. Got to make some new friends and joined in the game. The valuable lesson that I got to learn is that that language isn't the barrier of communication. I can hardly speak Chinese but some of those games don't really require language as two-way communication, only with gestures and laughter.

Phiew, that was one quite long post. Have a great day!