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.

I'm Legal now!

Wow, it's been over a month since the last time I updated this blog. I have a good excuse for this, and it's not a surprise that college has pretty much kept me away from blogging. Shortly after Fall quarter started, hardly no more exciting, flip-flopping things going on, unlike before. Things went as just as normal hang outs and stuff.
I even haven't got to share some stories that I've been planning to post. No promises that I'm going to post them soon. But I'm going to post them for sure, just don't know when. If time allows though.

Anyway, I'm just going to start from the most recent yet exciting event of the month. Just a week before my birthday, October 15, my friends and I were throwing a surprise for our friend Patricia at midnight. It was rather or considered brutal since they were throwing stuff (mostly food ingredients) to the birthday girl, but it was epic though. Too bad I missed the start since I had to wait for the bus for quite a long time).

After the surprise, we went for a late dinner in Sunnyvale with Pho noodle.

It was a nice midnight craving and I ended up returning to my apartment at approximately 1 pm. That was the latest time I'd ever got my butt home. I knew my parents were going to yell at me if they found out I got home that late *stuck out tongue*. But things were going just fine and I didn't (luckily) get yelled at.

Moving on to the next week, my 18th birthday was approaching and my mom suggested me to throw a party invite my friends for a birthday lunch. Good thing about this year's birthday, it fell right on Saturday. Saturday = weekend = friend's hangout time.

The funny thing actually happened on the turning night from the 22nd to the 23rd. My friend Dian was coming over at 10pm, which had to be questioned because it was peculiar for a friend to drop by so late.
But she just said "I'm bored at home." I stupidly believed in her cunning reason. Anyway, right at 11.30pm, she told me and my roommate Elda that it was time for her to go home because it was already late (I even offered her for an overnight stay at our apartment) and beckoned Elda to accompany her until she reached the bus stop.

So there I was, sitting in the turning night all by myself and skype-ing with my other friend Aymee. An hour passed and Elda still hadn't got back yet (where was I thinking that moment? Nothing but worries ><). I complained and whined to Aymee how I was going to spend my countdown to birthday all by myself, without knowing that Aymee actually knew all the surprise plans! I even screencapped our Skype conversation.

Look at that face concealing all the lies. Haha, kidding Aymee

It was already 12.15 am, October 23, 2010 and Elda still hadn't returned yet. Worried, I profusely texted her when she was going back since sure it didn't take long for someone to take a friend to the bus stop (especially the bus stop wasn't that far from the apartment). Elda told me she was accompanying Dian at Ihop buying a pancake for her brother, who was having a midnight craving, and that Elda might be coming home late. She even suggested me to sleep first.

There was actually this feeling in me where I felt I should stay up until she came up, and that was exactly what I did.

I went on believing them. Stupid stupid stupid. My dad called me through Skype and wished me a Happy Birthday, and at that moment, there was a ding sound at the door and I went up to open it. You would've figured what I found behind that door.

HA! SURPRISE!
Really, this moment reminds me with this one and this one.

To be honest, I really didn't expect my friends popping up at the door, especially since Elda was the first to enter and since she had the key to get in. Apparently Elda and Dian were involved in the plan, and so was Aymee but she couldn't join, so that's the reason why she still had a conversation with me through Skype. Perhaps, it's better to call her a bait then?

I was utterly speechless and that moment was like priceless.
It was my first time being surprised for like, officially.

We had a midnight time together for a while. Seeing my laptop was on, my friends were experimenting with its webcam (Photobooth application to be exact).

From left to right: Me, Inez, Patricia, Kathleen, Dian, Rebecca.







Together we munched on the super duper yummy Oreo chocolate cake (and the best cake I've ever tasted since I'm very much into chocolates). The whip cream and the chocolate was just so yummy (writing this makes me having this midnight crave, off for a second to grab the remainder slice of the cake).

Looks yummy eh?

We talked for a moment about the dance class Inez and I had earlier in the afternoon. My other friends simply asked us to demonstrate the recent dancing piece we had that afternoon. It was a bit awkward and the spacious living room became a sudden stage.

After a while, my friends bid farewell and left me and Elda alone. That wasn't the end of the night though. In fact, what we did was resuming the experiment with Photobooth. There was a funny clip made quite incidentally, which you can take a peek below.

It's a video of 8 seconds with us posing at the camera like we were about to take a picture. It came to a realization that the application wasn't set on Camera mode. It took a while for us (especially Elda) to realize that it was set on Video mode.

Her reaction simply LOL-ed me. We watched the video over and over again and decided to do some editing with it (like making it a slow motion that her voice sounds superficially like a groaning Godzilla, reversing it, etc)

The night ended at 3 am when we all had our stomachs aching out of LOL-ing at the video. We actually made out some of other videos as well. But there were too many of them. The video above was probably the funniest that I decided to put up here. Hope you don't mind about it, Elda. *peace*

The same day (of course it was the same day), I woke up quite late in the afternoon, and rushed to take a shower, preparing to go to the Pizza Hut, where I have made a reservation for my birthday lunch with my friends two days before. On the bus to the restaurant, I even met Amira.

The scheduled lunch was supposed to be at 2 pm but the host (aka me) arrived around fifteen minutes late. Terry, Agnes, and Jocelyn (my international friends who I also invited) had arrived there already.

At that point, you know, I felt a bit embarrassed since as the host of the event, I even got there late. So basically I didn't know where to put my face in front of my punctual friends.

From left to right: Agnes, Terry, Amira, Rebecca, Patricia, Inez, Kathleen, Idel, Kezia, me, Jocelyn, and Astha



The lunch went really well. The good thing was I got to introduce my international friends to my Indonesian friends).
There was a bit awkward moment between my Indonesian friends and my international friends though. But each of them got along very well during the lunch, especially some of my international friends hadn't got to meet each other before.

Did I forget to mention that it was a rainy day? The fact is, it was a rainy day. It'd been raining since I woke up and even until after lunch. The sky was terribly dark gray-ish. Scary, in short, like it was going to rain again. We called it a day though, and some of my Indonesian friends left the venue and so were I and my international friends.

Before getting picked up by their relatives, my international friends and I dropped by Staples, this small office depot located right next to Pizza Hut, to take a look around and see if anything's interesting. But soon, they had to say goodbye because their relatives had arrived to pick them up, leaving me and Elda the ones that were left.

Anyway, Elda ended up buying a small white board and a journal for herself. At first, I was like "Why the heck do you buy that white board for?" and she was like "It's freaking $1.00." Well turns out that the purpose she bought it was its price. But in the end, it was pretty useful since we put it up in the fridge and used it to leave notes to each other on weekdays.

Not bad huh? Nice choice Elda, although I knew the first reason why you bought it is because of the price. Low price, useful, pretty much it's worth it.

Anyway, from Staples, we went across the street to Target. Pretty much we didn't buy anything there, just seeking for some shelter since the wind outside blew kind of hard and it looked like it was going to rain. We looked up at the prices of beanbag chairs we were planning to buy for the apartment and even took a look at books (always the favorite section)

We decided to go home shortly before the weather worsened.

At home, I made a special dinner. I'm usually lazy at cooking, not to mention I'm not the best chef in the house, but well, I did my best.

I don't know what I should call this, but it's basically a mixed fried tofu and mushroom with a sesame oil

And also, the moment I'd been waiting for: unveiling the presents from my friends :)

The greeting card from my friends who came to surprise me the night before


From Astha!
She knew I really wanted to read these books! Thank you sooo much!!


Kezia and Idel gave me this cute Totoro frame. I couldn't resist to put it on display!

There's another greeting card from my friend Hang but I haven't got the chance to take a picture of it. Perhaps some time :)

Wow, what one heck of a post! This is what happens if I haven't posted for so long. But since this is also a special post featuring my friends' birthday and mine as well, I guess it's quite worth it. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this post!

P.S: My English's getting sucks. Another effect for not posting for a while.