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 ^^

Counting down the days

HI GUYS
It's been over a month since my stay in Indonesia.

I'll be going back on the 23rd of September, which is...next week.

Happy? sad? Well, I'm in between. Happy cos...
I MISS USA.
That's true!
Here: Crossing the road is INSANE, nobody seems to care when someone you hold the door to let them to pass by, no staying up late at friends', no FREAKING FREE MINERAL WATER

But on the other hand, I know I'm going to miss a lot of things I'd encounter in Indonesia, something that even a country as great as US could never replace.

1. ~za FOOD
   Indonesian authentic food is definitely irreplaceable. There's actually an Indonesian restaurant where I live, but the price is ridiculous. But that's one thing I can tolerate cos I understand it must be hard to get those one-and-only Indonesian spices.
   
   
2. ~za RAIN
   Yeah I'm a rain person. The sound of heavy rain, the smell of acid rain (not good though), being in the car and look through the window where water's dripping down while listening to the music, and umbrellas. No matter how you think how terrible these things are, but still, nothing's going to replace rain in Indonesia
   
   
3. ~za TV
   It's a personal issue. I don't watch TV there.
   
   
4. ~za CLIMATE
   I guess now I get why Americans love going to Indonesia: cos it's a place where you don't need to bother yourself by wearing layers of outfit! Or think about what to wear on spring!
   
   
5. ~za HOUSE
   You know that song from Bolt? There is no home like the one you've got, cos that home belongs to you *tears* Quite explains everything. Last but not least...
   
   
6. ~za ROOM
   I must say I love my bed there rather than here. The blanket I have in Cupertino is totally comforting and it can even make me sleep for hours! But well, there are no rooms in the world - even though, say, I get offered a room to stay at a palace in England - that are going to replace my one and only bedroom.
   

I'm pretty sure there must be lots more than just 6 irreplaceable things.
Anyway, *laconic mode on* I'm off to Singapore tomorrow. I'll be back on Sunday evening and hopefully I'll get to post some more interesting stories before I go back to the US on Friday next week.

gonna miss my desk...

Room sweet room.
Take care of yourself room and the other 5 irreplaceable things. See you next year!

Yeah I'm going back to Indonesia next year.

Corner for Designers

Hi all, how's your week?

I know I made an entry not so long ago. I just wanted to share what I've been up to lately. Remember I mentioned something about getting a part-time job the other day? Yep, I'm going to reveal it this time. My cousin is currently working on an online company that provides crowdsource design. It's the first in Indonesia! So it really is a hit cos my cousin gets to introduce it to Indonesian community!

Click on Sibby - Le Mascotte - above to have her take you to Sribu.com
I didn't know she was a girl till today
Sibby is designed by Renata


Flyer designed by Renata

Sribu.com (Sribu literally means "a thousand") is targeted towards companies/individuals and independent graphic designers. It works where a company or an individual acts like a client places a graphic design request in the website. Then bunch of graphic designers would submit a design according to the request in a competition format. Eventually the client gets to choose which design pleases him or her the most. The chosen design is selected as the winner of the contest and the graphic designer gets rewarded with an amount of money! Sribu pretty much acts as a mediator that connects in-needs-of-design clients and freelance designers.

Just today, I started to get active in the office. We launched the site's blog that basically provides extensive info you need in everything graphic design and decided an official name for Sribu.com fans and followers: Sribuddy. I'm honored to work as the blog's daily contributor and I'm also responsible for the blog's customization and layout.

Make sure you guys check out both Sribu.com to see what service we're offering you and Sribu's Corner to stay updated with our latest posts!

Korean Indulgence

It's been a while since I haven't tweeted anything about Kpop or Kdrama!
I'm planning to see this in the future, maybe when I get back to the US since streaming in Indonesia would be such a pain (talking about the slow connection and all).


Heartstring (Korean title: You've Fallen for me) follows the lives of two university students who major in different music genre. Their lives got intertwined in a concert. The drama stars Jung Yong Hwa and Park Shin Hye, marking the second time of their collaboration since You're Beautiful.

Yong Hwa and Shin Hye in the same project together, again, you know what that means????
Uber awesomeness... ^^

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I've been listening to some cool, new Kpop songs these days, and some of them got stuck in my mind for days.

MBLAQ - Monalisa

The guitar in the background music just...rules!
And can I just kidnap Thunder?

2PM - Hands up

Taecyeon. Nichkhun. Period...
*brb spazzing*

T-ara - Roly Poly

Here's what I like about T-ara. Their concept might be a girly but there's something that distinguishes them from SNSD. T-ara has more diverse concept in each song they have, making their song and style memorable. Last time in "Yayaya", T-ara came up with a Native American concept, and Bo Peep's theme is somehow feline-ish, cat-ish (with the whole cat dance). This time - despite the utterly long MV - T-ara emerges with a Grease-like 70s theme.

2NE1 - I am the Best

CL's "Naega jeil jal naga" lyric and her unique tone are really catchy to my ears I even instinctively sing it at some points.
Before this song, I was never a big fan of 2NE1. Thanks to I am the Best, I started to listen to all of their songs.

Last but not least....

Super Junior - Mr Simple

Gee, I'm biased, aren't I?
I know 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.

Signature Testing

Hello, just want to have a quick post.
I'll be adding a signature at the bottom of each post.

Hope it's going to work out for the rest of the post, and I hope you like it too.

Jakarta Pt 2: Beyond the Sea

More fun stories coming up now!
On Friday, on the first week of my vacation in Indonesia, I went out with Fany, Agnes, Monica, Widya, and Carmen to Plaza Semanggi. We had lunch together at its food court. It feels amazing to finally meet my best high school friends, got together, and shared our college experience. Even though my other friends go to different unis here in Jakarta, I can tell each of their uni has slightly different systems. But one unique thing I learn is that the Indonesian uni system and US college system aren't much different!

Anyway, here are some pictures I took. My friends haven't really much changed since high school!

I also gave away some souvenirs from the States for my friends. Don't judge them by the size, I know they're small, but these small hand sanitizers have made themselves quite a trend in the US! (sorta)

And they're cute too!

Afterwards, we decided we'd see Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon. Actually I've seen it once in the US, but it wouldn't bother me if I saw it for the second time. Although I'm not really a fan of these robots, I was quite mesmerized with the whole effect, which made me agree on the decision of watching it for the second time.

Excuse the blurry image. The lighting kinda sucks.

It seems like it's been forever since I saw a subtitled movie. It took me a moment that I was not in AMC, but in 21. Movies here are certainly subtitled. I'm really relieved by the fact that Indonesian government started releasing Hollywood movies again after several months of disbandment. The release of Harry Potter 7 Part 2, Transformers 3, Kungfu Panda 2, and Fast Five definitely make a good sign (and doesn't anyone realize they're all sequels?)

Well, moving on to Saturday still on the same week. Another reunion with my college friends was on the go, and this time, it'd take place in Seaworld, Ancol. I was psyched, since it certainly sounds better than going to Dufan (I'm not a fan of theme parks with many thrill rides). Unlike the other day, more friends were coming this time!

I went to Nancy's hotel to pick her up. Her hotel isn't located really far from Ancol. Only a couple of minutes away. Then we were off to Seaworld.

Before we entered the aquarium, we found a nice food court located just at its lobby. We decided to chill for a moment while waiting for our other friends to come. I made friends with Aymee's schoolmates who happened to be there as well: TM, her brother, and Joven.

After everyone was there, we entered the Seaworld at last. FYI, I went to another aquarium in less than a month, only the other one that I visited is in Monterey Bay. You know, that infamous Monterey Bay aquarium. I gotta say that aquarium is much larger than Seaworld. Seaworld's concept is more like putting every tank inside one big dark hall. Monterey Bay provides more rooms to display tanks.

Anyway, it doesn't eliminate the fact that Seaworld Indonesia isn't as good as Monterey. I love the fact that Seaworld Indonesia has bigger fish to display (even mammals), like Dugong, shark, and basically large sized beings that will make you drop your jaw in an instant. I don't recall Monterey having large sized fish.

We found Nemo!

Dugong. Probably the largest being and the only mammal we found in Seaworld.


Fresh water fish.


Some amphibians spotted in the site.


Darn, this dude is HUGE!

Then another thing I love about Seaworld Indonesia: they have underwater tunnel!
Unfortunately, most of the pictures taken in the undersea tunnel lacks of quality. The lighting doesn't provide much to produce high quality pictures. So I could only post some of the best ones taken inside.


Stingray found lying on the sand


Uh, I don't know whether it's the fish's real face or some kind of features that resemble face.



I honestly love the picture below, since it's actually the best yet high quality picture I took. Tony's expression reminds me of the song "Part of Your World". It's like he's dreaming to be part of...well...his surrounding.



It was a short visit, but the day was still young. We got out at around 2, had a brief visit to the Gift Shop, and we took off to find a nearby restaurant to have lunch.
Before that, some of my friends passed an ice cream stall and bought some ice cream. Nice to munch on in such a hot day.



We had lunch at Le Bridge. The place was hard to notice, since it turns out to be located far off the coast on a pier. So we had to cross a bridge to the pier across the beach where the restaurant exists.



The view in the bridge isn't so bad at all! It must also be a very rare moment for Jakarta people like me and my friends to take a look at the sea located in our city.



Later on, we returned to Seaworld where TM, her brother, Joven, and Aymee would be picked up. Before parting, we took some pictures. Some appeared to be very hilarious. The picture below is one of those some hilarious pictures. But way to go, boys! You guys show some high respect towards our country!



Last but not least, a group picture was finally taken.



It was a pleasant day! Nancy and I returned to her hotel where my parents had already waited at the lobby. Since it was already dinner time, we stopped by at an authentic seafood restaurant in Pecenongan area.