Somewhere A Clock is Ticking

I'm back!

2012-03-07T11:36:00.002+07:00

Hey all! Can't believe it's been so long since my last post! Sorry I've been gone for a while. My fiancee came to Indonesia on 28th January and left on 26th February. I'd been really enjoying my time with him and I wasn't online much. And then after he left, it took me a while to kinda get used to being "single" again, so I really didn't feel like blogging yet.

But now I'm back :). K and I spent a great month together, including one week getaway to Bali. Between him and I, we made tons of pictures, so I'll make an effort to show off some of our best shots here.

And then last weekend I went to see the 2012 Java Jazz Festival. It was a great festival, lots of amazing musicians... and it was also a new experience for me and the sidekick : taking concert pictures. So maybe I'll show a few of the more decent pictures here.

Now, to get this blog rolling again, I'm showing a picture of.... myself. :-D. The picture was taken at the first day Java Jazz Festival, where I wore some evidence of my shopping addiction ;).

The top is a modern take on Kutubaru Kebaya. Kebaya is a traditional blouse worn by women... not only in Indonesia but across South East Asia, and kutubaru is a style of kebaya. I combined it with a handmade bead necklace from Borneo. I really like this black on black combination with the pop of red-yellow detail. I bought the blouse from Gheia Batik Cloth and the necklace from Ethnic House.... oh, and the jeans were from H&M :P.

Speaking of clothing.... Me & My Batik project has been a bit neglected :(. I totally forgot to take pictures of K in the new batik shirts. And I need to make an effort to take pictures of myself with my new batiks.

However, the pile of batik fabric in my closet is getting higher! Instead of going to the dressmaker, I went ahead and bought some new fabrics in Bali, bought a new batik blouse which was delivered last Monday, and a new batik skirt is being shipped at the moment! Bad bad bad :-D. Anyway, I plan to go to the dressmaker this weekend with two of my fabrics... meanwhile let's see if I can revive the batik project ;).

Sharing with What I Wore Wednesday.

I wonder....

2012-01-17T20:51:00.001+07:00

You know I've mentioned a number of times that I hope to move to Netherlands to marry K. I don't really have a time frame yet on when it is happening, but I've made it pretty clear to the people at my office that I don't plan to stick around for a very long time.

Today we had a meeting with my new boss, about the 2012 activities, who's in charge of what, etc. And then he said to me: "I initially have a long term projection for you, but than I heard from Mrs. S (my former boss) that you might be resigning. We have to be fair here, if you're really resigning than I have to consider and prepare someone to take your position in the future. Regardless if you're staying or not, we still have to prepare our next generation anyway." I nodded. I understood. He was being open and fair and I totally agree with him.

What he said reminded me of a couple of months ago. You see my office is undergoing a big restructurisation and I (along with a lot of "potential" people) went through some phsychological assessment to see who's suitable for promotions and such. I didn't take the test seriously and I openly stated that I have a plan to leave the office. And as you may guess, I didn't get a promotion,

I chose this path. I choose love over career. But to be honest this month I wondered a lot, what if I didn't plan on leaving? Where would my career go?

In 2011, I found myself having more responsibilities than ever in the office. I saw myself moving into the "middle-tier" staff. Unintentionally I had started to built a network of colleagues from other government ministries, agencies, the military. Everybody who was everybody in my community knew who I was and I could sense that they were responding positively towards my presence in the team. I think people were starting to recognise my managerial skill. And I can see why my boss would want to prepare me to take even more important role.

Okay, maybe I'm being too full of myself here. Maybe I'm thinking way above myself. Really, I'm not "that" good that noone can replace me. But what I'm trying to say is, I can see that if I wanted to, I really did have the opportunity to move up the ladder in my career. But now I can see those doors closing. Whatever chance I had, I shut it down because I'm all set to leave the country.

It's not that I'm questioning or regretting my decision. I'm not. I chose to be with K over my career. And if I got sucked into a time warp and had to choose again, I would do it all over again. I love K. I wanna spend my life with him. At the end of the day whatever money or power you have, doesn't mean anything if you're not sharing with the people you love.

But I just can't help to think, what's next for me after I move to Netherlands? I don't think I can start over a career there. I've been in this "box" for so long that I don't know anything else outside. I don't really have the practical skills anymore... whatever I learned when doing masters, I never got to use them that I've become so behind with regards to the latest technologies and such.

I already said to K, that maybe I just wanna be a housewife. Maybe do an easy part time job, nothing fancy. And he was okay with it. But am I really okay with it?... Well, I think I will be all fine, even happy not having to work hard so much. But I know a part of me will miss it. The feeling of being a part of something big, something important for my country. Despite all my complains about how exhausting my work can be, I will miss it. I will miss the long hours of strategic meetings. I will miss the long hours on the negotiation tables. And I will miss the friendship I've built with the people in the team.

Ah... you know what? I made a decision, I'm sticking with it and I'm happy with my decision. I'm not gonna fret over it anymore. No questioning. No regrets. Being with K is the best decision in my life and I'm gonna focus on that.

What I wanna do right now, is just enjoy whatever time left I have at this office. Do my best and go out with a bang! :D. If these are my last years of working here, then let them be the best years ever. Leave my mark and walk out with my head high, knowing that I did a good job.

Going to Bali again soon!

2012-01-16T10:58:00.000+07:00

I miss taking pictures... I really do. I haven't had much practice other than taking pictures for Me & My Batik project. I really miss being outside or being at a new place, exploring, seeing new things and discovering new perspective behind the lens.

In the first week of February I'll be going to Bali with K for holiday. I'm sooo looking forward to spending quality time with him! And it will also be a chance for me to learn stuff from him, being the advanced photographer.

I've been to Bali so many times in the past 2 years, but it was always for work with some squeezed in sightseeing time. It'll be nice to finally be able to truly enjoy the island!

Me in front of Pura Taman Ayun, Bali, May 2011.

Can you guess?

2012-01-14T12:18:00.000+07:00

Okay, can you guess what the object of this picture really is?

Lights! Ceiling lights from the historical Asian-African Conference building in Bandung. I played around with the exposure and it turned out pretty cool :P. Here's a picture of the actual room where these lights are.

Sharing with SOOC Saturday and SOOC Sunday.

Pisang Goreng Simanalagi

2012-01-10T14:03:00.000+07:00

If you ask me what are my favorite snacks/street food in Indonesia, I would say pisang goreng (eng: banana fritters) is among the top 10. In Bandung, there's this shop that specializes in fritters, especially pisang goreng. Hence the name: Pisang Goreng Simanalagi, located on Jalan Dalem Kaum, Bandung's shopping district. I'm telling you, I think they make the best pisang goreng ever! There's nothing like the sweet taste of their caramelized fried banana... gosh I'm drooling just thinking of it!

The last time I went to Bandung, I made sure to stop by to have a bite... which ended up as 4 bites, it was too yummy! :-D. Diet.... what diet? Forget it! lol.

At the time, I had a chance to chat with the owner a little bit. So the place has been open since 1948! The original owner, Mrs. Tjiong, is actually still alive today at 93 years of age, although she's not really well after a having stroke. When Mrs Tjiong became too old and too ill to run the business, the current owner which is one of her son was appointed to continue the business up until today.

What's so admirable as how they maintain the quality of their food. I've been going to this place for as long as I can remember, and their pisang goreng is as tasty now as it was over 20 years ago. I love this place and I really hope it will still be alive 50 years from now.

Yummy yummy yummy!!!

Sharing with: Our World Tuesday and What I Ate Wednesday.

Me & My Batik #4 : K's batik shirts

2012-01-08T19:10:00.000+07:00

Did I tell you that K likes batik too? :)

Yesterday I picked up his batik shirts from the tailor, and they all turned out really nice. I like them! See the picture collage below:

The top two shirts are made out of the Papuan Batik I posted before. They turn out nice, right? Brighter colors and less formal than the bottom two shirts. The 2 brown ones are made from pretty classic Yogyakarta batik. This brown-white type of coloring is called Sogan. I like how elegant they look.

I really can't wait to see K wearing them. Being the white guy that he is, he can really pull bright color shirts. Hmmm, I think he will look handsome :P. I will see him in three weeks, so I'll be sure to make him wear them and take pictures for the blog. Keep an eye, okay? :)

Ship on the horizon

2012-01-03T09:37:00.000+07:00

A quiet and cloudy morning in Sanur Beach, Bali, December 2011. The lonely freight ship on the horizon reminded me of the month I spent on board R/V Sonne, in the middle of the Indian Ocean back in 2006.

During that month, I barely saw land, and there were literally days that we didn't encounter any other ship at all. It was, in a way, a lonely journey. No phone signal, no tv, very limited satellite internet connection. It was just us and the crew keeping each other company. My favorite time of the day on the ship was the afternoons on the deck, waiting for sunset. It was the one luxury we had, our own private sunset view every day.

I remember the last night on board. I think most of us didn't sleep much because we were eager to land. It was on the crack of dawn when our ship finally entered the harbour, and most of us stood on the deck, watched as the sun rise and the land became closer and closer. The journey finally came to an end.

That ship on the horizon, when will its journey end?

Sharing with: Our World Tuesday, Watery Wednesday, Outdoor Wednesday, and Skywatch Friday.

2011: a great year of blogging

2011-12-31T14:06:00.000+07:00

What a great year of blogging has 2011 turned up to be for me... 80 posts!! ... now 81 posts, plus 33 posts at the new health blog! I'm wrapping up this year by looking back on what attributed to my blogging achievement.

Blog meme & linky.

Unintentionally I stumbled into the world of blog meme/linky in March, the first one I ever linked up to was Girls Talk, a group mostly Filipino lady blogger. Hooking up with these lovely ladies really helped me to blog more regularly and connect to other bloggers out there. I'm sorry to say that I no longer make posts for GT as my interest has stirred away from it. But I'm forever greatful to these ladies!

From GT, I got hooked on a number of photo blog linky, which I found to be more of my suite. I started digging up my stock photos to see if there were any decent pictures I can post and link up. And as I travel more for work and vacation with K, not only did I get more material to link up, I also kind of revert back to what this blog originally was about, traveling. Another thing was that I reconnected with an old interest of mine: photography.

Traveling and photography.

Needless to say, the two goes hand in hand for me. For years I relied on my Canon IXUS 970 IS, which at the time I bought it was one of the best point & shoot camera available. At the price of about 300 euro, I could've gotten myself an entry level DSLR! I traveled a lot with this little guy and produced some pretty decent pictures. But at some point it really became clear to me that if I wanted to make even better pictures, I need to move up to DSLR. Hence, the new sidekick, my Nikon D5100.

Of course DSLR was a whole new playing field, and so my journey in photography begins. I follow a number of brilliant photographer-blogger who are generous in sharing their knowledge, and I encouraged myself to post to their link ups every now and then. I'm having fun learning photography and the sidekick and I will hopefully see more action and improvement in 2012!

Health, fitness, & weightloss.

The not so nice part of the year was when I found myself once again being overweight. I decided to make a seperate blog for my health journey, which also led me to connect with a number of health/fitness blogger out there. I've been posting about my highs and lows, and I've received the much needed words of advice and support. I'm absolutely continuouing with this blog in 2012 as I'm not quitting on my health journey.

Me & my batik project.

Hehehe, this project was my girly side screaming for attention. Just this month I launched Me & My Batik series, and I'm having a blast! This project is really in motion as I have a couple of new batik dresses being made at the tailor right now, and I already have some ideas of which fabric to be made into which outfit. It will be fun fun fun!

So 2011 had been amazing in terms of blogging. 2011 had also been a hectic year for me at work :P. Sometimes I wonder how did I make so many posts? But the truth is, blogging really makes me happy and relaxed, that I just always had to find the time to make a post, even if it were just to make a quick post showing off a picture.

I'm not sure if I'll continue to be as productive in 2012. I have a big plan for my future that recquires quite a lot of attention and time for me to take care of things in 2012. Between that and my work, I suspect that I will have less time for my blog and photography. You know what they say, you gotta give some to get some.

But less frequent as it will be, I know I'll keep blogging. Because blogging makes me happy :).

Here's to a great year ahead, guys! Happy New Year!! Prost! :))

Over East Java sky

2011-12-28T10:12:00.002+07:00

Shot these on the flight back from Bali last weekend. I usually choose the aisle seat whenever possible, for practical reasons ;). This time I got the window seat, and I had my sidekick with me. The ride was considerably smooth, and we had a decent view of Mount Bromo as we flew over East Java.

Storm cloud forming

The beautiful Mount Bromo.

Linking up to Wednesday Whites and Skywatch Friday.

Me & My Batik #3 : Tenun skirt

2011-12-27T15:47:00.000+07:00

First of all, next to batik, my country is also very rich of fabrics made of other techniques such as weaving and tie dye. That being said, occasionally I'm going to make posts about other traditional fabrics under "Me & My Batik" series. Sorry for the bit of inconsistency, but my main collection so far has been batik, and I don't wanna start another fashion related series in this blog just yet. And the title "Me & My Traditional Fabric" just doesn't feel like a very catchy title to me.

Today I'm showing off a skirt made of tenun (eng: weave/woven) fabric. I got this from Klambie Koe, an online boutique on Facebook. This skirt was a real catch, they only made a few of these, and it was pretty cheap as well, only 150.000 rupiah (approx. 17 USD). When I saw this, I just had to grab it! I'm not sure from where this fabric is, my guess is from somewhere in Sulawesi. Makassar perhaps?

Anyway, I wore this to my Aunt's Christmas thing the other day, the colors are just appropriate for a "tropical Christmas", right? ;)

Linking up to Monday Mingle , Ruby Tuesday, and What I Wore Wednesday.

My niece

2011-12-27T13:41:00.001+07:00

Took pictures of Little Miss S. as she was (sleepily) playing with an old-rusty stationary bike at my aunt's house during Christmas the other day. I love the intensity in her dark-almond-shaped eyes :).

Linking up to Sweet Shot Tuesday and Photo Friday

Me and My Batik # 2: Batik Papua

2011-12-24T16:59:00.000+07:00

Earlier this month I had an assignment to Jayapura, Papua, the farthest I've been in Indonesia. I didn't get the chance to take decent pictures of this lovely town, but I did however got a chance to go downtown one afternoon and went to some batik shops there.

Papua as a whole has a distinctly different culture than the western part of Indonesia. Unlike Java, Papua didn't actually have a batik tradition, I believe people only started making Papuan batik in the 1980's. The designs are also very much different. Here they use a lot of tribal designs based on the patterns used by the local tribes, weapons, sheilds, drums, and animals. So the design are quite masculine in my opinion. To make it more unique, they really like to use bright colors here, from bright yellow to hot pink, you name it. It kinda remind me of Hawaiian shirts : bright bold and vibrant colors. Very interesting!

Given that I don't know when I'll be able to return to Papua, I made sure I bought some batik fabric for myself, K, and for my sister and brother inlaw who are batik lovers as well. I only bought the cheaper - printed/stamped ones because I was on a tight budget at the time :P. Below are pictures of the fabrics I got for K and myself.

The first two are for K, and they are going to be made into long sleeved shirts.

The next three are mine. The first of them has exactly the same pattern as K, just different colors. Would be fun to wear them together, right?

This one has very bright colors, and even with the pink-ish color it still looks pretty masculine to me because of the weapon prints. I'm thinking of turning this into a shift dress, to highlight the purple-ish detail on the bottom.

This tourquise blue fabric is my fave of the three, and surprisingly the most expensive one. I like the use of the tribal design while still maintaining a level of subtleness. I think this is more like the style of Garut/Tasikmalaya batik, so maybe I might be able to combine it with a Garut batik with smaller patterns to spice it up a bit..

I don't have a clear idea yet in what kind of dress or outfit I'll turn them into. But I'll be sure to update when I finally turn them into clothings!

Heart shaped water lily leaf

2011-12-19T21:48:00.000+07:00

Just a short post for Watery Wednesday. I took this picture during my photo hunt to the Botanical Garden some time ago. Don't you agree that shape of the leaf is like a heart? Lovely :).

Bandung : Old Dutch Building

2011-12-18T13:23:00.000+07:00

Bandung still maintains a number of old building from the Dutch era. This particular building is located on the famous Asia Afrika street, just next to the historical Savoy Homann Hotel. Judging from the writings on the wall, my guess is this building had been used as a warehouse and an import-export trading company. When I went pass this building in 2010, it was a little bit rundown. I went here again just this month, and I was happy to see that it had been restored and used by the OCBC bank.

Linking up to SOOC Sunday and Our World Tuesday
.

Me and My Batik # 1: 2011 pictures

2011-12-18T10:05:00.000+07:00

After writing the introduction post of "Me and My Batik" series, I tried to dig up some pictures of myself wearing batik in 2011, but turns up there aren't many pictures afterall. I guess I'm used to being behind the camera and not being in the pictures. I suppose for this series I might want to make self pictures using tripod every now and then. Me, modelling ... imagine that! lol :P.

The first picture is from February 2011, in K's apartment in Delft. We dressed up to attend graduation of some friends at TU Delft. I wore a sleeveless Laseman batik dress with black cardigan and opague tights. It was winter afterall :).

The next picture was taken in Sandakan, Malaysia, June 2011 during a dinner in between our usual bilateral meeting. The dress code was obviously batik, and it was actually nice to see the Malaysian guys in Malaysian batik shirts. I should try to take a picture of Malaysian batik someday, quite different style than the Indonesia ones. Anyway, my dress was made from what was suppose to be a batik sarong. My tailor did a good job transforming it into a dress, right?

Next is my fave pic of all, me and K in batik, on my birthday back in July 2011. K looked nice in a blue Tasikmalaya batik shirt, and I wore a tailor made - deep fuschia Garut batik dress. Do you notice that the pillow covers behind K are also batik? Those are more on the peranakan style batik.

The following pic was taken at the Soekarno Hatta International airport when K was going back to NL last August. I got this Kartini style batik blouse in Laweyan, Solo during our trip. Check out the matching green shoes! ;)

The last picture was taken in Dilli, East Timor, September 2011, in between yet another bilateral meeting. Batik was again the dress code for our delegation, and I was wearing a tailor made dress from Balinese batik sarong with subtle prints. I like using sarong fabric to make a dress, because I only get to wear real sarong matched with kebaya a couple of times a year to wedding parties. Turning it to a dress means I can wear it anytime I want :).

I know the pictures here are not too clear, I'll make sure to have better pictures for the next posts of "Me and My Batik", okay! Stay tuned :).

Me and My Batik project

2011-12-17T16:25:00.000+07:00

For those non-Indonesian readers who might be wondering, batik is a cloth/fabric that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeingtechnique [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batik]. Please refer to wikipedia or other online resources for more details.

I've never been more in love with batik than I am right now in my life. Being a Javanese girl, I grew up liking batik, but it was not really until these past two years that I really incorporate batik into my daily fashion, so to speak. It started out as an obligation to wear batik to work on Fridays, so I had a few batik shirts in my closet, nothing fancy or expensive. And then I began to have more work related meetings outside the office where batik was practically the unspoken dress code... hence the need for more batik outfit. I admit that I am one of those girls who doesn't like wearing the same thing over and over again when seeing the same group of people ;).

Meanwhile, the Indonesian fashion trend and industry has become more batik friendly. 10 - 20 years ago, real batik cloth always looked so classic and formal and quite pricey as well. Nowadays, the colors are so vibrant, and the options are wide. You can knock your self out with the cheaper stamped batik clothes, easily under 10 USD a piece, to those fully hand painted ones that cost over 500 USD a piece. The fashion designers are also becoming more and more creative in using batik (and other traditional fabric) in their design. I'm telling you, I think right now is the most exciting era for batik in Indonesia!

Anyway, I began to buy batik dresses, and next to it I also began buying batik clothes, planning to turn them into dresses. My sister introduced me to this great (and affordable ;) ) tailor, and I've been hooked since. And these days I've also been hooked on the batik online shops on Facebook, that I created a facebook list for all the online shops I "friend" :P. Quite honestly, looking at those shops and their designs every now and then has help me with stress/boredom at work :D. I hope they won't block facebook at work!

The problem right now, is that I've been buying quite a number of batik cloth, but I haven't been taking them to the tailor. I'm no fashionista, but like every other girl, I like good clothing. I like getting dressed and feeling pretty. And I like batik. I wanna have fun with my batik collection instead of just piling them in my closet. So I'm starting this project: Me and My Batik.

my pile of batik cloths

At least once a month, I will make a post about my batik collection. It may be a picture of me posing in one of may batik dresses... , it may be about one of my batik cloth and how it looks like after being sewn into a dress... , it may be about a batik cloth or dress I'm drooling on.... or my recent batik purchase... anything about me and my love for batik!

You know what they say: Don't wait to have fun in fashion! I'm gonna have fun with this project and you are invited! :))

Goodbye Delft

2011-12-17T13:58:00.002+07:00

*Note: please excuse the abundance of pictures.

It seems strange to be saying goodbye to the city I left over 2 years ago. But today I'm saying goodbye one more time.

You see, after I left, K was still living in Delft. And that gave me this 'connection' to Delft, that part of me still lived there. I even stayed there again during my visit in February 2011. But now, K moved out of Delft, to a nice house in Sliedrecht. It's a good move for him, for us. From the small shared apartment to a real house, with garden and all. As K said, it's just time to move on.

Funny that I feel more mellow about this move than K is. I mean, I'm happy about the move, because it marks the next step in our lifes. But leaving behind the place I called home, the place where I had great memories, the place where I found myself again... it's kinda sad, to be honest.

6 years ago, I moved to Bogor from Bandung, my hometown for 25 years. But strangely enough, I didn't feel the sad - melancholic feeling the way I felt when I moved out of Delft in 2009 and the feeling I have today as K moved out from Delft. To me, leaving Bandung was the fresh start I needed. I liked living alone in Bogor.... but it was nothing compared to how much I loved living in Delft.

So today, I'm saying goodbye to Delft for the second time. Next time I go to Netherlands, I won't be able to stay there anymore. Yes, I can still do a day trip for a visit, but it won't be the same as living there. I'll miss everything... the lovely old town, the tilting Oude Kerk tower, the rows of canals, our picnics at Delftse Hout, the crazy TU Delft's students running around with their ugly bikes, the annual lichtjesavond, and of course, our favorite Locus Publicus bar, hehehe... I'll miss Delft.

Here's a tribute to my Delft, forever my hometown.

My place and his place

Roland Holstlaan 57 - my place.

K in my room, between the laptop and the ketchup bottle :)

Roland Holstlaan sky

My first snow ever - Roland Holstlaan

My sunsets @ Roland Holstlaan


K @ his place - Spoorsingel 26

Me @ K's place

Oude Kerk tower - view from K's place

With people

TU Delft


Me being 'serious' @ Geolab

K is my very own Rocket Scientist :)

Our 2nd year synthesis Project presentation.

On top of TU's famous library roof

TU Delft campus.

Around Delft

Sundown

2011-12-06T09:25:00.001+07:00

29 mm, 1/3 , f4.5

Sundown over my housing complex yesterday afternoon. Reminds me of a sentence from a song:

The sun sets red with rage, white clouds float by like high cottons...
[Buried in Blue - Harry Connick Jr.]

Sharing with : Skywatch Friday .

Alone, waiting

2011-12-05T22:25:00.001+07:00

One morning in Bandung. I strolled down Braga Street and went inside this old - run down cake shop "Sumber Hidangan" to sit and have a piece of their classic cake. Turned out I wasn't the only one sitting alone that morning. This girl was sitting quietly across the room, sipping her "Frambosen Sorbet ", looked at her phone from time to time, and doodled on a piece of paper. I couldn't help to take a picture of her, and wonder, what or who was she waiting for?

Sharing with : Our World Tuesday, Sweet Shot Tuesday.

The Praying Mantis

2011-11-19T14:32:00.001+07:00

Still from last week's walk at the Botanical Garden. Miss Y. again spotted this Praying Mantis. It was not easy to see at first because it really blended well with its surrounding. Pictures were edited in Picasa.

55 mm, 1/60, f6.3

55 mm, 1/60, f5.6

Somehow lately I'm more and more drawn towards close-ups and macro photos, but macro lenses are quite pricey :P. I should hold back my shopping demon and just keep practicing with my current lens until I'm more certain of which direction of photography I'm heading to.

Sharing with: Camera Critters, Macro Monday.

Pile of CDs

2011-11-19T12:53:00.001+07:00

This is me playing with the sidekick, while fighting boredom at the office. Let's face it, there are those days when work really feels like.. work, you know? :-P

My friend was busy checking the content of these CDs delivered from one of the consultant hired by our office. While not trying to be artsy or anything, I thought that they would make a good practice photo object. The first picture is SOOC, while the second picture is after some minor editing in Picasa.

focal length 55 mm, 1/2, f5.6

after editing in Picasa

The original picture looked quite okay in the camera's screen, but after downloading to the laptop it looked underlighted and kind of grey-ish. Which made me wonder if my laptop's monitor setting is playing tricks to my eyes. But either way, I still have so much to learn about photography. At some point I'd like to get that SOCC pic to look closer to the edited picture, i.e. I want to use as little editing as possible to get nice pictures.

Learn n practice!

Sharing with: SOOC Saturday, SOOC Sunday , Mellow Yellow Monday.

Dragonfly

2011-11-13T17:22:00.001+07:00

Miss Y. spotted this dragonfly just sitting on a cactus when we were at the Botanical Garden yesterday. It took me quite a few minutes to get a clear sharp picture of it, and to our surprise, the little thing didn't move an inch. Which got us thinking, is it normal for a dragonfly to just be super still like that when we were clearly distracting it?

I never noticed before how thin and transparent its wings are.... makes me wonder if I'd had a macro lens, what kind of details I could've captured?

Linking up to Camera Critters and Macro Monday.

Bogor Botanical Garden

2011-11-13T14:44:00.001+07:00

Itching for some action with the sidekick, yesterday morning I asked my lovely bff, Miss Y. to go to the Botanical Garden. This garden sits at the heart of Bogor and is undoubtedly the nicest place in town, if you like a little bit of nature. So we meet up at the gate at 9 am, and walked around the park till 12.

The garden is always somewhat busy in the weekends, but yesterday was exceptionally busy. As I was waiting for Miss Y. at the gate, I saw big groups of students coming in... uh oh! I was hoping for a more quite walk, but well, it's a big garden anyway, plenty of space! :)

Busy day. Kids in brown uniform are scouts group.

The president's palace (one of them) actually sits back to back with the garden, so we had a good view of it... can't get inside the premises though.

Back side of the President's palace.

The garden kinda have it's own climate, if it's even possible. For one thing it's pretty humid, but not too hot, bright but cloudy.... the combination that makes taking pictures not too easy in my opinion. But nevertheless we enjoyed the walk a lot. We did make a pitstop at the icecream booth... hehehe :).

Anyway, here are a few pictures as we walked to the more quiet parts of the garden. As this was my first real practice session with the sidekick, I took the time to try and figure out different settings. When I went home I had a look at them and hmm...... let's just say I'm not satisfied. Most of them look kinda flat, you know, like the colors are not rich enough. I know I can photoshop them, but I'd rather have good pics when I take the shot.

But hey, I won't get better if I get satisfied too easily right? :). All in all, I learned quite a bit yesterday, and looking forward to having more practice. I'll post more pics in the next posts.

The foresty part of the garden.

Big ol' tree. I asked Miss Y. to pose there to show just how tall & big it really is.


Miss Y, observing the trees.


River that runs through the garden.


Big bamboo canopy.


The lovely orchid green house.

Miss Y at the Mexican Garden a.k.a cactus garden.

Linking up to SOOC Sunday , Our World Tuesday, and Outdoor Wednesday.

Real Steel inspiration

2011-11-10T09:55:00.000+07:00

Last night I saw Real Steel with a friend. I saw the trailer a couple of weeks ago and I thought, this looks interesting. So I called up my friend to go see it.

I'm notorious for falling asleep in the middle of what's supposed to be entertaining or action-packed movies or such. I fell asleep during the fight scene of Kungfu Panda 2, which was suppose to be a fun movie to watch. And I fell asleep again during the big air balloon shooting scene of The Three Musketeers. Despite having Orlando Bloom as an eye candy, the movie was not all too interesting for me.

I was already feeling sleepy during the day from not getting enough sleep before, so I was worried that I might fall asleep again :P. But I didn't, thankfully. The movie actually kept my eyes on the screen all the time! I won't make a movie review, but let me say that this may not be Oscar material but it is an entertaining movie.

Interestingly, there are two things about the movie which inspired me quite a bit, and it's not the robots, cool as they are. First, the cinematography. For an action-robot movie, this movie was beautifully shot at places. Being the newbie photo hobbyist, there were really some moments that I wish I could pause the movie and capture the frame. There was one scene where Charlie and Max was standing at a distant facing each other in front of the run-down but lovely gymnasium doors. And then a number of the landscape views and the close up on Max's face were really gorgeous. Oh, I so wish I can take pictures like that.

The other inspiration was the boxing. I really enjoyed watching Charlie Kenton doing the shadow boxing as he was coaching Atom the robot, and when he was 'fighting' next to the ring in the last round of Atom vs. Zeus. I loved Hugh Jackman's moves, the speed and power he showed. I've been doing Body Combat lately as part of my workout, and seeing those boxing scenes really tickled me. I would love to have that kind of power and speed doing my shadow (kick)boxing.

Let me end this post by saying that through out this movie I was really captured, I found my self closing my mouth to stop me from shouting during the fighting scenes, and I was touched when Max shed a tear watching Charlie 'fight' wight Atom. Oh, and did I mention the short romantic scene between Charlie and Bailey? Cute :).

Bailey Tallet:1200 miles for a kiss.
Charlie Kenton:Worth it. So worth it.

Introducing my new sidekick

2011-11-06T17:52:00.000+07:00

After quite sometime, I finally saved up enough money to get my first DSLR camera! Trust me, I'm not very good with saving money, between my clothes and shoes shopping addiction, it's so easy to spend any extra money I had... lol. But finally last week I got my new sidekick: Nikon D5100 with 18 - 55 mm VR lens kit. I am very happy about this, absolutely the best shopping decision of 2011 for me!

Why Nikon? Because K also has a Nikon (D90) and already own some lenses and filters, so I figured I can borrow his lenses ... hehehe, plus I can always ask him for tutorial and stuff cos we have the same brand of camera. Another plus for me is that the D5100 is physically quite small and light, even with the lens, compared to something of similar specs such as from Canon. I tend to bring a lot of stuff when I travel, so big bulky camera wouldn't have been too handy.

Here's a picture of the camera. Being the girl that I am, I had to get a nice bag with it.... Hence the cool black-green bag from my fave brand, Crumpler.. hehehe. Even though I don't know how to use the camera yet, I still gotta look the part, you know ;). *such a girl :P*.

The picture above was edited using Picnik. It was my first try of this well known online photo editing and I'm loving it. If only it was available offline. My internet is not too reliable, so Picnik can't be my go-to option.

Anyway, just because I've been surrounded by photographers and photo hobbyist all my life, doesn't make me know what to do with a DSLR camera. So I'm learning, and it's a lot to learn. For example, I still have to try to remember if the f number is high means smaller aperture... stuff like that. But I'm having fun with it. At least this camera comes with a nice range of preset 'scenes' and 'effects' which are nice to begin with.

Here are two pics of my first tries with this camera. Flower from our small garden. Just a couple of so-so pictures, really, but I feel like showing it anyway. Maybe someday I will look back to these pics and see how far I've come.

It's really quite a big step from my point-and-shoot Canon IXUS. It really makes me 'think' first before making a shot. Which gives me an even higher admiration to those amazing photographers out there. While I'm not expecting to get to such a level, I do hope I'll slowly get the hang of things and start producing better pictures.... and show in this blog :). Meanwhile, I'll still post pictures from my (and K's) archive, okay?

Here's to the next step in my photo-blogging journey! :)

Another Caterpillar Shot

2011-11-06T10:18:00.000+07:00

My niece found this caterpillar in our small backyard and decided to play with it :).

Linking up to Camera Critters, SOOC Saturday , SOOC Sunday and Macro Monday.

Farol Lighthouse

2011-10-28T06:28:00.000+07:00

Another shot from the morning walk in Dili, Timor Leste. The Farol Lighthouse sits beautifully at Dili's small harbour, facing northwest to the wharf.

Sharing with: Skywatch Friday, SOOC Saturday and SOOC Sunday.

Reflection on Indonesian Blogger Day

2011-10-27T19:03:00.000+07:00

Today Indonesian Blogger celebrates Hari Blogger Indonesia... Read up on the short history of Hari Blogger from Enda Nasution's post. Enda is the "big brother" of Indonesian blogger scene, so to speak. Anyway, Hari Blogger got me to look back on my blogging history.

Growing up, like any girl, I always had a journal... until someday in 2005, my best girlfriend introduced me to blogging. She basically told me it would just be like an online journal. And so I tried it. I created a blog and made my first post on July 25th, 2005. At the time I really did treat it as if it was a personal journal. I wrote mostly about my feelings, emotions, my ups and downs, and of course... my love life. It was that time when I just got out of a 5 years relationship.. I was vurnarable, had low self esteem, and yet at the same time, eager for a new chapter in my life... even a new love. And the blog was all about that.

However I quickly realized that those things are really not for the public to read. So I made that first blog private, and started this blog on November 2nd, 2005. I wanted it to be lighter, as a place to share the not so private part of my life. Almost paralelly, I made a blog in my-now-deceased Friendster account, where I wrote about general stuff like music. I lost interest in Friendster's blog quickly, but this blog was also in a ngelected state. I mean 5 posts in 2006? :D

In wasn't until 2007 that I started writing more about two things, my scholarship hunt and my travel. It was also the time when I really started to be more involved in the blogger world and opened my horizon. I found a number of interesting blogs, some I still follow to this day... and that's also how I met Fairy Mahdzan of myindo.com , the only blogger I've ever gotten to meet in real life (only some weeks ago, finally! ) and be friends with.

Then I went to Netherlands, when my blogging came to a near halt for 2 years (only 13 post per year!). I came back to Indonesia, slowly restarting blogging in 2010, until finally this year, 2011, I feel like I've found how I wanna continue with this blog. Alas, the most productive year in my blogging history!

Truth is, I was never an outspoken person. Some say I'm introvert, shy, even snob and bitchy. But in blogging, I found my outlet. Blogging is my way to reach the world in ways that I couldn't in real life. Blogging has allowed me to reflect on my feelings and thoughts in the good and bad times. Blogging has also allowed me to share the beautiful things I see in the world, and this is how I reconnected to my interest in photography, something I intend to pursue soon. Finally, blogging allowed me to connect with different people from different parts of the world.... which truly makes me feel like a 'world citizen'.

Blogging has been a profound part of my life, and I believe it will continue to be so in the coming years. Happy Blogger Day!

Candi Sukuh

2011-10-24T11:44:00.002+07:00

Feeling happy afer seeing Candi Ceto, we went back down the mountain to the other site, Candi Sukuh. This candi was from the same era as Candi Ceto, and also has a similar style, although it's a smaller complex, with only 3 tiers, sitting at about 900 m above mean sea level.

Here you can have a clear view of the Mayan-pyramid-like building such as the one of Candi Ceto. You'll also find some animal statues including the big turtles and a set of reliefs which are supposed to be telling a legend (don't know the story though, sorry).

A lot of people consider this site to be somewhat erotic because of a number of reliefs of nude people and depictions of the reproductive organs there (I'm not showing in the pictures, ok? :P). But actually representations of the organs called Lingga for the male organ and Yoni for the female organ, are not uncommon in the Hindu temples in central Java, because they're said to represent Shiva and his wife, which are the symbol of fertility.

All in al, this is another unique site and absolutely worth the visit.

Linking up to Our World Tuesday.

On meeting a president

2011-10-23T08:38:00.000+07:00

How often do you get to not just see, but actually meet a president?

The first time I actually saw a president was when I was in 2nd year of high school. The president at the time was Suharto. I was in a traditional music club, and my school's club was chosen to be a part of a larger ensemble, performing at Indonesia's 50th independence day ceremony at the presidential palace. By palace, I mean in the proximity of the palace. The president and distinguished guests were at the podium at the stairs of the palace, while we were on another podium set up on the street in front of the palace, about 50 meters distant. So I did see the president, kind of... lol. :)

The second time I saw a president was I think back in 2006, at my cousin's wedding, it was president SBY. The president was at the wedding because my uncle was the president's classmate in military academy, plus at the time he was at the peak of his career, holding a very strategic position at the army. Needless to say it was one big commotion. It was the only time I ever attended a wedding where they had metal detectors at the entrance... :). And of course, I didn't get close to him.... it was a huge wedding hall and I think I was about 10-15 meters at the closest.

The third time, I actually get to meet a president. It was a whole different experience. It was back in November 2010, when my colleagues and I went to the Republic of Palau for a bilateral meeting with their government. Palau was such a small and relaxed country, that there were barely any government protocol whatsoever. While our delegation was all neat in our formal batiks, their delegation was in their so called "island formal", i.e. Hawaiian shirt and leather sandals!! Talk about island life to the max!

Anyway, we were invited for a small dinner at Joe's bar. We later found out than Joe was a senator and the president's brother. When we got there, Joe was just chilling at a corner of the bar, so we greeted him and them moved on with our dinner. Until one of our host told us that the president was coming! We were like, no way!!... And sure enough, he did come, not really to meet us but just to hang out with his brother at the bar... lol :). There was practically zero security, he had one guard and that's it. Of course he was kind enough to greet us and let us take pictures with him, before leaving us to our dinner and chilled with Joe at the corner.

Long post, but here is the picture of me and Mr. President. Not the best picture, but really... unforgettable memory.

Sunrise in Dili, Timor-Leste

2011-10-13T14:30:00.001+07:00

On my last morning in Dili, I walked along the waterfront, enjoying the quiet morning and the sun rising over the harbor. The crescent moon added to the beauty of the moment. Perfection.

Sharing with Skywatch Friday.

Aeria Branca, Dili - Timor Leste

2011-10-05T10:34:00.001+07:00

I was fortunate to have a short visit to Dili, Timor Leste for the usual bilateral meeting just last month. Although as usual I spent most of my time indoor, I had a chance to see the a bit of the city. The nicest place of the city is undoubtedly the waterfront... Dili is among the most quiet capital city around this region (Palau's Koror was also quiet), and subsequently the Dili's waterfront is quite nice, clean and quiet.

This is a picture I took at Areia Branca beach - also know as Pasir Putih (eng: white sand) in Indonesian - taken in the afternoon just before sunset. If this was in Bali, the beach would've been packed with people waiting to see sunset. But here... it's just nice and empty :).

Sharing with: Our World Tuesday, Watery Wednesday and Outdoor Wednesday.

Infinite Sky

2011-09-30T10:16:00.000+07:00

Looking out from the main gate of Candi Ceto kinda gave me the illusion that there's nothing behind the gate but the infinite sky.

Linking up to Skywatch Friday.

Candi Ceto

2011-09-27T13:09:00.002+07:00

I've drafted this post for some weeks, but didn't get around to pick the pictures. This is another post from the summer holiday, I hope you're not sick of my posts about candi... . I have to admit, K and I have a fascination towards old architectures, and when you're in central Java, it's all about candi.

So after spending a day in Yogyakarta, we headed to Solo for our next two destinations on our list, Candi Ceto and Candi Sukuh, which are located on the foot of Mount Lawu, about an hour drive off Solo.Candi Ceto, the further one was our first destination. It's located quite high on the mountain already, about 1400 m above mean sea level. So while driving there on the mountain roads, we were presented with some nice view of the surrounding tea plantations.

Stairs to the main gate of Candi Ceto.

Candi Ceto complex.

I don't know much about the history of this place. It was built in the 1400's, pretty much the same era as the Prambanan. It is also a Hindu temple, but the architecture and the reliefs on the wall are significantly different from the typical stupas of Prambanan and the other candi in the area, which was intriguing for us. Within the complex you'll see a number of animal depictions. The most noticable one is the big turtle.

Statues and reliefs in Candi Ceto.

The turtle, triangle, and arrow.

See the alignment of the big turtle, the triangle and the arrow-like thing? I later on learned that the turtle represents the "below / under world" and the triangle represents the mountain - the "middle world". While the arrow like thing, is actually a depiction of the male organ (you know what I mean :P), which represents the "upper world". Together from the under world to the upper world, is a symbol of the rite towards perfection.

The pyramid-like main temple.

What's also unique of this Candi is that the shape of the top building looks quite like a Mayan Pyramid from Central America. Too bad it was hard to get full picture of the structure.

Looking through the gates.

Candi Ceto complex today consists of 9 tiers, although originally it was 14 tiers. The restoration received quite some critiques as they made quite some alterations from the original structure, among others to fascilite religious activities here. That being said, we still found this temple to be quite pretty and unique. And the view down the mountain from the temple is pretty nice.

Us! :)

Linking up to Our World Tuesday and Outdoor Wednesday.

Sonnet XVII

2011-09-26T08:51:00.000+07:00

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda -

A man and a dog

2011-09-24T19:58:00.000+07:00

Another picture from Utrecht, 2009. I don't remember at which side of the city center this park is, but when we went here this statue really captured my eyes. Somehow I find the statue to be rather lonely and sad, and yet it fits nicely to the quiet mood of the park.

Linking up to SOOC Saturday and SOOC Sunday.

Reichstag dome reflections

2011-09-24T06:32:00.000+07:00

Reichstag Dome, Berlin, January 2008

The Reichstag Dome is one of the must see place in Berlin. K has a great eye for strange photography angles, and this picture is one of the evidence :).

Linking up to Weekend Reflections.

Kuta Beach

2011-09-13T07:44:00.000+07:00

This is the famous Kuta Beach in Bali, Indonesia, photographed on a sunny day of February 2010. I love how at some point the sky and the ocean becomes almost seamless.

Linking up to Blue Monday, Watery Wednesday, and Skywatch Friday.

Laying on the grass

2011-09-07T20:41:00.001+07:00

A nice bright summer day doesn't happen too often and are much desired in the Netherlands where the typical weather is windy, rainy and gloomy. So when such day come, everyone will just grab their bikes and head out to the parks for a fun relaxing picnic. There's something about laying on the green grass that is just so refreshing,

In the photo are K's feet as he was laying down on the grass on our picnic at Delftse Hout park, June 2009. Good times :)

Linking up to Outdoor Wednesday.

A day of being a Jakarta commuter

2011-09-07T20:28:00.001+07:00

This week is the first working week after the big Idul Fitri holiday, and for some people today is their first working day after taking leave to visit relatives back in their hometowns.

Today was also the first of the usual prep-meetings for yet another bilateral meeting. I was assigned to attend this meeting in a hotel on Kramat Raya street in Jakarta. Now, by now you should now that I don't live in Jakarta. I live in Bogor... Cibinong to be precise, where actually quite a big percentage of the citizen commute daily to Jakarta to work.

Normally whenever I have a morning meeting in Jakarta, I'd already go in the afternoon and spend the night at my sister's who lives conviniently around Jalan Sudirman, right at the heart of Jakarta. Why? Cos I hate the morning traffic between Bogor and Jakarta. You can literally get stuck at the highway for an hour... even 2 hours on a bad day. And inside Jakarta it doesn't get any better. There are days when traveling door to door from Bogor to Jakarta can take up to 3 hours.. crazy, right?.

However, today's meeting was at 10 am, and I was too tired to go to Jakarta in the afternoon. So I thought, let's give it a try, going in the morning. And so when the alarm buzzed at 5 am, I quickly go to shower, gather my stuff, have a bite of something for breakfast, and by 5.50 I was going out of the house towards the bus terminal.

I catched the last morning bus for the route Cibinong to Tanah Abang. This is not the most obvious route. It would've made more sense to take the Cibinong - Senen bus.. but I don't like the bus (it's pretty crappy bus) and somehow the route always feel so long (which not entirely true) and boring to me.

I could've taken the commuter train from Bojong station, but first of all I don't really know how to get to the station with angkot (red: public transport in the form of cars, holds bout 10 people). I can take ojek (red: motorcycle taxi) but that would cost me a fortune :P. And on top of it I won't get any seat in the train... super full! And hence taking the Tanah Abang which would take me directly to Jalan Sudirman... the only part of Jakarta that I know better.

By 6.05 I was already sitting in the bus, but it didn't depart until 6.20. Then it goes slooowly towards the highway, picking up passangers on the way... and by the time it got to the highway entrance, it was already 6.55. Full bus, of we go! Surprisingly today, the traffic jam wasn't too jammed :P... well by the usual 2 hours jam standard anyway. And by 8.10, I was already at Jalan Sudirman... I was too early for the meeting!!

I got off the bus near the Dukuh Atas TransJakarta bus shelter... and I thought, maybe I'll just stop to eat around here. This is actually very close to my sis, and I know it has a lot of food street hawker in the morning. So I sat there, bought a National Geographic magazine and orderd a bowl of Bubur Ayam (chicken rice porridge) and a bottle of water.. slowly enjoying a nice breakfast while reading magazine and observing the people who works around the area.

Sitting there, I thought... hmm, this is what it's like to be a commuter. Woke up at the crack of dawn to beat the morning traffic, breakfast at street hawker before starting work at 9 am. And not to mention by the time you get to Jakarta you already look like a mess from sitting in bus for 2 hours and sweating under Jakarta's morning heat. Not too easy life, actually.

After breakfast, I walked to the Transjakarta bus (famously called the busway), took the bus from Dukuh atas towards Pulo Gadung, got off at Matraman to take the bus towards Ancol, and stopped at Kramat Sentiong which is just 50 metres from the hotel. I got there... still early, 9.30 :D. All sweaty, I took a stop at the hotel's toilet to refresh and put on my make up. Ready for meeting!

Stupidly... or luckily for me, the meeting didn't last all day, in fact it ended at about 2 pm. I quickly took the same route back to Cibinong, knowing that if I don't catch the Cibinong bus early enough, I won't get any seat... so not looking forward to standing in the bus for an hour. And by 4.15 pm, I was home. Tired, not from the meeting, but from the travelling and the heat. Oh, Jakarta heat had me sweating to the point of getting headache. I spent more time traveling than actually being in meeting!!

So that was a day of being a Jakarta commuter. To think that probably up to a million people do this everyday from the surrounding cities of Jakarta (the greater Jakarta area is called Jabodetabek : Jakarta Bogor Depok Tangerang Bekasi). So many commuters, so little reliable public transport, too many private cars. And you wonder why there're days that Jakarta is completely gridlocked?

To come to think about it, I don't wanna be a commuter. I'm happy to live only 10 minutes away from the office.

2 years apart

2011-08-30T08:59:00.000+07:00

Today marks the 2 years the fiancee and I have been in a long distance relationship. On 30th August 2009, I said my goodbyes to him and his parents at Schipol Airport. It was a lot of tears and emotions, because at the time neither of us knew how it was going to be, whether we will stay together, whether we will ever see each other again.

But today, it's a whole different story. I am sure more than ever, that this is the man I wanna spend my life with. There's still another 3,5 years before I'm free from my obligations here. This long distance has not been easy, but it really hasn't been that bad either. I will wait till the day that we can finally be together. :)

Our tangled feet. Photographed in Scheveningen, August 2008.

Colorful drinks

2011-08-29T10:34:00.001+07:00

A bit out of focus, but it's just a fun picture of me with blue and yellow beverages :). Still in the summer 2011 holiday series, taken at Pizza Hut - Malioboro Mall, Yogyakarta.

Linking up to Blue Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday.

Candi Prambanan

2011-08-26T23:48:00.001+07:00

The next stop in our holiday was the famous - UNESCO heritage - site, Candi Prambanan. We've actually been here back in January 2010 during our backpacking trip, but at the time we weren't so lucky with the weather. Back then, we got there, took pictures of the first view of the site, and in 5 minutes it started pouring big rain for an hour, hehehe.. tough luck.

So this year, after our visit to Ratu Boko, we found that we were still pretty early, and the weather was so nice.. so we decided to go again. While it was beautiful the first time, the 2nd time we realy got to enjoy it more and had more time to observe the details.

I've mentioned about Candi Prambanan being built by Prince Bandung Bandawasa to win Princess Lara Jonggrang heart. Well the story was that the princess actually didn't like him... I mean who would want to marry a guy who killed your father, right? So she made this impossible request for him to build 1000 candi's for her in one day and must be done before the next sunrise.

Being the "resourceful" guy that he was, before dawn his "helps" already finished 999 buildings! His helps were some "underworld" creatures who were afraid of sunlight. The princess became worried and order her maids to light lots of torches, such that the roosters were fooled into thinking it was sunrise already and made cock-a-doodle-doo sounds. The prince's helps got scared and left before finishing the 1000th candi. This failure got the prince angry, and he cursed the princess into a stone statue! I guess in the prince's mind, "If I can't have you, no one else can". Geez.

Well, tragic legend as it may, Candi Prambanan is a complex of beautiful candi's, dedicated to the Hindu gods trinity: Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu. FYI, the 2006 earthquake left quite some damage to the site, and even until today they're still working on fixing it, so some of the buildings are still off limit, including the biggest bulding, the Shiva Candi.

It is so amazing to see these buildings, and to see that they managed to restore it after being found in semi-ruins conditions. If you're ever in Indonesia, even if you hate touristy place, you really have to come here.

Okay, I'll stop talking now. All pictures here were photographed by the fiancee (none of mine were up to par :-$), who's a good photographer and gave me full permission to show off his shots :). Thanks, love!

Enjoy the pictures! More on our holiday stories on the next post.

Linking up to SOOC Saturday, SOOC Sunday and Our World Tuesday.

First clear view of Candi Prambanan.

View from inside of the complex.

On one of the candi's.

Notice how they skilfully patched the broken rocks together.

This is the tip of one of the cand's that fell off during the 2006 earthquake. I hope they plan to restore it soon!

I always love these statues on the staircase.

Isn't this cute? The "mouth" has a hole to let rainwater flow out of the candi.

Statue of one of the gods *sorry I forgot which one*.

They say the cow is one of the transformation of Shiva.

Ratu Boko's ancient pool

2011-08-24T09:14:00.001+07:00

I'm preparing another longer post from the 3 week holiday (from now on I'll just refer to it as summer 2011 holiday). But meanwhile, I'm sharing another picture from the Ratu Boko visit. I mentioned in the previous post that the palace have in total 35 bathing pools in various sizes. This is a picture of one of the bigger pools. I love seeing how you can see layers of the rock formation. The water itself is very green because it's mainly rain water and I'm guessing that the pool doesn't really have a water circulation system.

Linking up to Watery Wednesday and Weekend Reflection.

Istana Ratu Boko

2011-08-20T10:15:00.000+07:00

For months before the fiance's visit to Indonesia, we've planned and made bookings for 5 days trip around Yogyakarta - Solo. We've actually been here during our 10 days backpacking in January 2010, but there are still a lot to be seen. Besides, we are not the broke - just graduated - students that we were, so this time we can afford to be more fancy ;).

On an early Friday morning, we boarded the 6 am Air Asia flight to Yogya *yawn*, arrived at about 7.15 at the airport, where we have arranged for the car rental to give us the car. Road trip! Hehehe, being the Geomatics Engineers that we are, we came prepared with maps and pre-set coordinates of the places we wanted to see in my phone's navigation system. Ready to roll!

In Yogya, and pretty much across central Java, there are lots of ancient temples and ruins, Candi, as we call it. Istana Ratu Boko is one of them (istana = palace), located not too far off the famous Candi Prambanan. I've been wanting to see this place for a long time, coz I've seen some amazing pictures of the place. Since we were still too early to check in to Hotel, we decided to go directly there.

I was happy to see that the area has been very well maintained and promoted. Located on top of a hill, the management build an open air cafe at the entrance area, and they boast of the beautiful sunrise and sunset view. Mind you that you have to pay entrance fee. For local tourist it's pretty cheap, roughly 1.5 USD, but for foreigner: 10 USD. Kind of unfair, right? And this goes for the other major Candi's like Prambanan and Borobudur.

The palace site truly didn't fail us. As we walked past the remains of the palace's gate, we found this big, seemingly empty ground. But as we look further, we started seeing recovered remains of the palace's foundation. Okay, don't imagine the palace as one big building like Versailles. This palace was more like a complex of many buildings, the main hall, the women's quarter, cremation hall, etc.. kind of like an enclosed village.

The Palace's Gate

The archeologists estimated that it was built in the 8th century. The buildings were made with andesit rock foundation, typical of the candi's around the area. But then the main facade were from woods, which is why what's left behind are mainly the foundations, parts of the fortress and drainage system, and the bathing pools.

It was a quiet morning at the site, and we practically had the palace to ourselves. As we walked around, we quietly absorbed how big the palace is, and in my head I started to imagine how grand the palace must've been back in the day.

Imagine this, total area of 25 hectares (parts of the area have long turned into settlements), sitting on top of a hill at almost 200 meters above sea level, having almost 360 degrees view, at one side facing the magnificent Mount Merapi. So big and strategically placed! Legend has it that King Boko (ratu = king or queen) was the father of princess Lara Jonggrang, for whom Prince Bandung Bandawasa (after killing the king) built the infamous Candi Prambanan to win her heart.

We've visited a number of Candi's, but this one is really something else.After a lot of pictures and tanning skin (we forgot sunblock!), we left the palace in great awe and feeling very satisfied. Again, no camera can capture its true glory. However, I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking now.

Closer look of the gate.

View of the palace entrance. The square building with the hole is the crematorium

Foundation of the public assembly hall.

Pendopo - the palace's main hall.

Keputren - the women's quarter.

Some of the pools. There are 35 pools in total.

One of the water wells.

Seems there are a lot still uncovered.

Palace's walls with scatterd ruins of smaller structures around.

Us, around the palace.

Linking up to SOOC Saturday, and SOOC Sunday.

The birthday

2011-08-18T20:47:00.000+07:00

This year, again I spent the birthday with the fiance... happy!! While we never make a party, we wanted to have a fun day together.

The morning started with the usual happy birthday wishes from him and my parents, followed by the presents he brought from himself and his family. As per request, he got me this nice hard cover version of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I've been curious to read it... now I have to make time for it! Next to it, his mom and sister gave me a pair of self-made earings and matching bracelet... so lovely! Aren't they the sweetest?

After dressing up, we took the car to downtown Bogor. First stop: the karaoke!! Karaoke is undoubtedly among the favorite pastime for us Asians, and it's amazing how karaoke places can be fully booked on a regular day. By karaoke place, I mean the usual family karaoke, not the one with 'escort' , okay? lol. ;)

Anyway, I've talked about how much fun I have karaoke-ing, and finally he became curious to try it. And guess what? We had fun! 2 hours of singing and dancing and being all crazy... from ABBA to MJ to Madonna to Rihanna, it was a blast!

All the singing left us thirsty and hungry, so we went to Botani Square mall and had lunch at Sagoo Kitchen. This is our favorite restaurant in the mall, because the decoration is quite unique, such that it doesn't feel like eating in a mall. And of course, the food is good. They serve a fusion of old Indonesian - South East Asian - Peranakan food, from nasi goreng to bistik jawa to roti kaya and teh tarik (their teh tarik is not too good unfortunately).

Full and happy, we checked in at the Novotel Bogor for R&R. Enjoyed the afternoon at the pool (albeit a pretty small pool and the water was cooold!), and then had a nice dinner at their cute Italian restaurant, Capriccio.

It was a great great day!

Linking up to Nostalgia.

Merdeka! ...and off to the movies...

2011-08-17T21:53:00.003+07:00

I'm supposed to continue posting about my holiday, but allow me to make a short interruption, okay? :).

Today is the Independence Day holiday, and I spent the day .... at the movies. Hahaha, so much for being a nationalist! To my defence, I first attended the flag ceremony at the office (7 am, so early! *yawn*). Later in the day, I went to the movies wearing a red t-shirt with the Garuda - our national emblem - printed on it. Hey, at least I'm showing some spirit here.. hehehe.

First I watched the last Harry Potter, finally! I must say I was not a fan of this movie franchise, because I read the book first and naturally I had developed my own vision of the book. I didn't think the movies, especially the first ones, did the book justice. But the last two sequel I actually enjoyed quite a lot. Probably because they are much more grown up and darker.

I still wish they didn't have to show the last part when they fast forward to 19 years later. Even in the book I thought it was quite a cliche. In my mind, the perfect ending will be if both Voldermort and Harry Potter died at the end! Hahahaha, I'm sure some of you are giving me that "are you nuts?" look right now. But I imagine that would just be dramatic and tragic.

And afterwards I met my best friend to watch Kung Fu Panda 2 in 3D. Being an animated movie and holiday and all, the theatre was packed with kids. Luckily the audience in my row were all grown ups. Not that I hate kids but sitting next to a bunch of jumpy kids is not exactly fun.

The graphic and 3D aspect of the movie was nice and very much enjoyable. Story wise it was just so-so... But hey, what do you expect? And speaking of which, I have a confession: I fell asleep during the movie! :$.

I swear, in the middle of the peak fighting scene, when all the kids are at the edge of their seats making "uuh aah" noises and a little scream here and there, my eyes started to get heavy and I dozed off for a few minutes! Hehehehe, not even sure why. The movie was not that boring, so it's probably just because I didn't get enough sleep the night before. But then again, it's not the first time I managed to fall asleep during action-packed movie. Maybe as a friend used to say, "it's just not my cup of tea".

Anyway, Dirgahayu Indonesia!

Curug Seribu

2011-08-17T09:58:00.003+07:00

Sorry for the delay. I promised to write about the 3 weeks I spent with the fiancee, but since we went to quite a few places, I think I'm just going to spread it into a few posts. So here's the first one.

During the first week of his visit, we decided to go to the natural reservation area at the foot of Mount Salak, a sleeping volcano in the vicinity of Bogor. The area is called Gunung Salak Endah, and in the area lies a number of supposedly beautiful waterfalls. So we looked it up in the map, set my phone's gps, and drove there.

It took us over an hour to get there, coz the traffic was quite busy, and once we start climbing to the mountain, the road became more narrow so we couldn't go so fast. But once we start entering the area, it was all worth it. Beautiful tall and dense trees, fresh mountain air. It was great.

We set our gps to Curug Seribu (curug = waterfall, seribu = thousand). At the time I didn't know that this was the biggest and furthest waterfall of all. When we got to the parking lot, I asked some local people there for direction, and they told me it's another 30 minutes walk. I was like "ah, not bad"... little did I know it was 30 minutes of hiking down to a deep valley.

After approximately 30 minutes, we came across a small waterfall. It was lovely, so we stopped to take pictures. But two other people that were walking ahead of us just kept walking, so we figured, this can't be it. Besides, we can still hear the roaring sound of the waterfall. Then we walked further and then we found ourselves looking being in the deepest valley, and there it was, the big waterfall!

It was just so breathtaking! We were standing about 50 meters from it, and I was getting seriously wet from the splashing water. It is about 100 m tall, and our pocket camera couldn't quite capture how grand this waterfall is within in one frame. The pictures here do not do it justice, but it was the best we could do. But in all honesty, it was among the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen in person.

As they say, what goes up must go down. In my case what goes down must go up. We had to climb back up to the parking lot... and it was no walk in the park. That hike gave me a big slap on the face, and led me to rethink about my health, as I mentioned in my new blog post. But anyhow, it was a great trip, definitely worth all the hikes and traffic jam.

More stories from our holiday coming soon!

Linking up to Watery Wednesday. and Just Beautiful .

New blog is up

2011-08-10T21:35:00.000+07:00

Hey guys,

The first post of my new blog is up!

The new blog is about me trying to be healthier and getting back into shape. It's really not a big surprise for those of you who has read my blog for the past 1,5 year, coz I've had quite a number of posts here about weight loss and such.

One of the reason I decided to make a separate blog for it now, is that I don't really want to mix up the content of this blog too much anymore. It is already random as it is now, although in the past few months it has turned slightly in the direction of travel - photo blog, and I'm quite happy with the current state of this blog.

I needed a place where I can write and update on my health progress, and fall backs, on a more regular basis, and I don't want to turn this blog into a health / weight loss blog. Also if someday for some reason I feel that I'm finished with writing about the health journey, I can just stop there and leave it as it is, and still have my main blog running.

So, if you have any interest in what my health journey is all about, please hop on to the new blog. I'll be more than happy to see you there. Otherwise, please stay with me in this blog, which will still be my main blog.

Thanks! :)

Red windows

2011-08-09T12:31:00.000+07:00

Lovely red windows of an old building around Utrecht Domtoren, still from my Utrecht 2009 photo series.

An entry for: Ruby Tuesday .

GT: Favorite Word

2011-08-08T20:06:00.005+07:00

I'm quite behind with this GT post. Initially I wasn't going to post at all, coz I couldn't think of a favorite word. But when I'm reflecting on the 3 weeks I just had with the fiancee, I thought of a word that we use a lot in our conversations.

You see, neither of us are native English speakers. He is Dutch, although his English is impeccable. And me, my spoken English is not that good. So over the years, we've sort of developed our own "language" so to speak, which is a not-so-proper English, with a dash of words from Indonesian, Dutch, and other languages like Japanese.

Wait, Japanese?

Hehehe, I'm quite a fan of Japanese Dorama, and sometimes I would make him watch dorama with me. He he even started to like some of them! Our favorite is the funny yet beautifully filmed Nodame Cantabile. Anyway, after watching so many episodes, we picked up on some easy words. One Japanese word that we use a lot in our conversation now is:

Chotto

which means "a little" or "wait". We found this word to be so cute and actually quite versatile to be used in our mixed-language chats. For example we would say "Love, wait chotto" , or "We still have chotto time before going", ... you get the idea. While it's not gramatically correct in any way, we like it.

So there it goes, my favorite word :).

My entry for Girls Talk.

The Yellow Tree

2011-08-08T19:39:00.000+07:00

It was a cloudy day when we decided to do a bit of sightseeing around Utrecht, back in 2009. As we walked down the streets around the Utrecht Domtoren (eng: cathedral tower), this tree caught my eyes. It was just standing there at the corner of the street, strikingly yellow, such a contrast to its surrounding and to the gloomy weather.

This is an entry for SOOC Sunday and Mellow Yellow Monday

Back to blog again!

2011-08-08T19:37:00.000+07:00

Hey guys, I'm back from my three weeks hiatus!

Some of you know by now that I'm in a long distance relationship, and the reason for my 3 weeks off is because my fiancee was visiting me!! :)) Needless to say that spending precious time with the fiancee trumped work, blog... everything! And hence the hiatus.

But now I'm back. I've missed my blog quite a lot, and I plan to write something about the trips I took with my fiancee during his recent visit. I also have a few posts ready to be linked up to the usual blog meme's, just wait and see soon!

On the side note, I'm preparing a new blog. About what? I'm not gonna tell now, but when it's up and running I will share it here immediately. Keep an eye!

It's good to be back. More posts soon!

Slainte!

GT: Birthdays, gifts and wishes.

2011-07-13T23:45:00.000+07:00

I've actually written about my best birthday ever for one of my GT post, so I think it's not too much fun to rewrite the whole thing again...That being said, it's actually my birthday next week, and my fiancee will be here for the next 3 weeks, so I won't have much time to blog. Thereby this GT post will sum up for this months theme .. sorry ladies, lazy me!

I don't think I've ever had a real birthday party. Even when I was little, my parents were not big on birthdays, so birthday cakes and blowing candles were rarely in the picture. And that carried on to my adult life, I don't really celebrate my birthday... I'd feel fortunate enough if I get to have a small dinner with close friends. In some years the pre-birthday-days even became kind of depressing.

But that changed when I met the fiancee... I've spent my past 3 birthdays with him, and I'm about to spend the 4th with him too :). The first year, as you know, was 'celebrated' in Austria. The 2nd year we did nothing coz we were both super busy with thesis! But we made it up by going to Barcelona after my graduation. Last year, the 3rd year, we had a 'date' in Singapore... my fiancee flew from Netherlands to KL than to Singapore, and I flew to Singapore to meet him and spent my birthday week there. And this year, again he is flying in from Netherlands, and we've booked a nice place here in Bogor for my birthday.... hihihi :).

Being in a long distance relationship, I'd say that the best birthday gift is really just having him next to me. Nothing else matters. All the other gifts are just icing on the cake. And my birthday wish is, and will be for the next few years, is to just be with him, and to someday really live together with him instead of being miles and miles apart.

There it goes, my post for this month's Girl Talk. Have a great month and see in a few weeks, ladies!

Playing in the river

2011-07-13T01:10:00.001+07:00

Did you ever play or swim in the river when you were growing up? I didn't. I've spent my entire life being a city girl. Although there was a river not far from our house, it was dirty and polluted. Even if my parents had let me play or swim there, I don't think I would ever have done it anyway.

But my dad used to tell me about his childhood, growing up in the late 1940's to 1950's. He grew up here in Bogor, which was then already considered as a city. But even so, he was still able to play and swim or fish in the river coz the environment was still very clean compared to say 30 years later when I was born.

The fiancee and I saw this funny statue/installation on the shore of the Singapore River, close to the Fullerton hotel. When we saw this, I thought... wah, this must be how the children used to play back in the day. Teasing and pushing each other to the river, swimming and playing till they get sunburn. Maybe my dad was like this too.

Sometimes I can't help but to envy the children who grew up back then, because they were more connected with nature than today's children. No fancy computer games, no PSP, no smartphones, no game centers. Just being creative with what nature provides.

picture courtesy of the fiancee ;)

This is an entry for Photo Tales Tuesday and Watery Wednesday

Berlinische Galerie

2011-07-11T01:20:00.001+07:00

This fun crossword-puzzle-like instalation sits in front of the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin. Picture was taken in January 2008 during my holiday with the boyfriend.

An entry for:

For technorati : 8U6FZBNBXE5G

Sepilok's Orang Utans

2011-07-09T22:25:00.000+07:00

I spent the last week in Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia, for yet another round of bilateral meeting. Since there were no direct flights from Jakarta to Sandakan, we took Malaysia Airlines from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur, then transferred to the flight from KL to Sandakan. We arrived late afternoon on the 3rd, and left on the 8th morning. Looong meeting, we didn't even wrap up the meeting until almost 4 AM on the 8th! Talk about meeting frenzy.

But fortunately, as usual in these meeting rounds, we had half a day for a bit of sight seeing. Sabah, in general, is mostly famous among avid travelers for it's natural beauty... the mesmerizing Mount Kinabalu and Borneo's thick tropical forests with the wildlife. Sandakan itself is the home of Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Center, where they foster orang utans until they're ready to survive in the wild again. And we were fortunate to have a bit of time to visit it.

We got there in time for the morning feeding time... all visitors could go to this platform to watch the feeding. We had to keep our voices low because the orang utans are apparently shy creatures and can get scared away easily. So there I was, a long with the visitors crowd, in the humid rainforest, standing in awe of these beautiful creatures. They were just so cute and loveable!

It was amazing to see their strength and agility, hanging and swinging on the trees and ropes.

If you can spot in the picture, one of them had a baby orang utan, and the little fellow just hung on to the mother's belly all the time.. so cute.

It was funny to watch, when the caretaker came with the bucket of fruits, one of the orang utan approached the caretaker and took his hand in this loving and a little impatient way... almost like a child :).

Other than the orang utans, Sandakan is also home to the long-nose proboscis monkeys. Too bad we just didn't have enough time to visit other places. Maybe someday, it would be nice to come back again, with my fiancee, and see more of Sandakan's wildlife!

This is an entry for Camera Critters and SOOC Sunday.

Teeny Weeny Caterpillar

2011-07-03T20:43:00.001+07:00

We found this little fellow bungee-jumped from a tree to my hair.... so cute!

An entry for Camera Critters and Macro Monday

Barelang Bridge

2011-07-01T11:36:00.000+07:00

Barelang bridge is a collection of six consecutive bridges connecting the islands of Batam, Tonton, Nipah, Rempang, Galang and Galang Baru, in the Kepulauan Riau province, Indonesia. Batam is not exactly famous for sight seeing, because being located just a stone's throw away from Singapore, people normally come here for business, shopping, or to take the ferry to Singapore. So this bridge is one of the very few non-shopping attractions of the island.

This is a picture I took of the tip of Tengku Fisabilillah bridge, the first and the nicest of the 6 bridges, during my visit to Batam just last week. This is also my first entry for Skywatch Friday.

GT: Memorable High School Moment

2011-06-30T07:54:00.000+07:00

High school for me was just okay, you know... not too special. I was just another ordinary student, kept decent grades, stayed out of trouble for the most part, and was never really part of any clique, if you know what I mean.... sounds kinda boring, no?

Thinking back on memorable high school moment, one of the highlight must be in the 2nd year of senior high school, when my whole class decided to ditch school! That was really something.

You see in the 2nd year, we attended school from noon until late afternoon (say around 12.00 - 17.00). As you can imagine, it was not the easiest hours to stay awake and focused on studying. Students ditching class in the 2nd year was really nothing new. But one day, the whole class (and I'm talking about over 40 students) decided that we were so bored, that during the first break time, we all "escaped" from school.

Our classroom was on the 2nd storey, with big windows facing the school front garden, a few meters away from the gate/street. So a few of us sneaked out first, brought their car (ya, some of us already had a car) to the street near our class... then they stood under our window, as the rest of us started to throw our school bags to them! Quick and dirty... hihihihi :)

Of course there were one or two real teacher's pet who refused to ditch class, so some of us just took their bags and throw them out anyway. They had no choice than to go with the flow then! Once the bags were taken care of, one by one we started sneaking out from the school's back gate, which was mostly unguarded... and quickly ran to one of our classmate's house who lived just around the corner of the school. When everyone was 'save', we went to the movies, still in our uniforms.. hahahaha....bad bad bad... :-D.

Needless to say, the next morning we got yelled at pretty bad by our homeroom teacher, at some point she even cried out of anger. Yeah, we felt bad for her... but in all honesty, I think none of us ever regretted ditching class. It was just one those high school mischief you had to experience at least once in your life ;). And the funny thing was, at the end of the day, we never got any kind of punishment at all. Talk about getting lucky!

This is my entry for:

Shciekanaal, view from Abtswoudsebrug, Delft

2011-06-29T22:55:00.003+07:00

Abtswoudsebrug is a small bycicle - pedestrian bridge over the Schie River in Delft. This is a movable bridge, so when a ship needs to pass the river, the bridge can be closed and rotate on its axis allowing passage for the ship.

In the two years of living in Delft, I'd passed this bridge countless time, going to the university and back. Day and night. All weather, all season.

I'm sharing today a few pictures I made from the bridge, looking over the Schie River, one of my favorite view of Delft.

On a nice sunny day

Beautifully lit in the evening

Frozen in the harsh winter days

This is an entry for Watery Wednesday and Just Beautiful

GT: Class Picture

2011-06-26T19:44:00.000+07:00

This theme couldn't have come at a better time. Just last week I was invited to my elementary school reunion. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it because it was a short notice and I on that day I had to fly to Batam for work. And then next month, there's a plan of a class reunion of my junior high school! I think I'll be able to make it this time, and I'm hoping nothing will come in the way.

Okay, let's start with elementary school. From kindergarten until the 4th grade of elementary school, I went to this tiny private school where everyone practically knew each other and grew up together. I had to move to another elementary school for the 5th-6th grade because we moved house and it was too far to the current school. I'm afraid I don't have scanned pictures of elementary school though, I have to dig them out of the storage someday!

Junior high school, I went to public school where I stayed with the same classmates for 3 years. For the lack of better pictures, these are picture of some of us together. Curious to meet them next month!

Some of my junior high school friends

On to senior high school, again I went to public school. This time I stayed with the same class for 2 years and then a different class for the last year. We had some fun moments, but that's for next post!

left :1st & 2nd year of high school ; right : 3rd year of high school

Then it was university. As I mentioned in previous post, I studied Geodetic Engineering, which meant the majority of my classmate were boys. Out of about 50 people in my class, there were only 6 girls! And at the the time it was a record breaker, because in like 50 years since that major was thought, it was the first time there were more than 4 female student in a class :). Needless to say we, the girls, learned to think, act, and joke like boys.. hehehe.. no way we could've survived being a "girly girl" :)

Bandung Institute of Technology, Geodetic Engineering Class '97

Then in 2007, I went back to school for masters in Netherlands. I have to be honest, of all the years I spent being a student, doing masters was the best of all. Great program, great teachers, great friends, such different atmosphere from Indonesia, and on top of everything, that's when I met the love of my life ;).

Delft University of Technology, Geomatics '07

So there it was, my class pictures :). This is an entry for:

My profile update

2011-06-16T21:22:00.000+07:00

Just a quick note.

I didn't realize that I haven't updated my profile in so long... It still said that I was a student living in Delft, Netherlands. Well, I'm no longer a student and I currently live in Cibinong, Bogor, Indonesia.

Further, I think I need to clarify that I'm an Indonesian girl. Ever since I joined the Girls Talk meme and some others, it seems that some readers assumed that I was Filipino because the GT community is mainly lovely Filipino ladies :). That being said, so far I've enjoyed being part of the community and it's fun to be getting comments in Tagalog every now and then... so by all means, keep them coming, guys! :))

GT: Most hated subject.

2011-06-16T00:21:00.000+07:00

When it comes to the least favorite subjects at school, I have several nominees.

Physical Education : Oh my geezers, I swear I have two left hands or two left feet, because I suck at sports, especially those that requires balls and equipments of some sort. And I dreaded every time the PE teacher made us do such games.

State ideology and citizenship : Yes, there were such subject during my days :-P. Indoctrinations ... indoctrinations ... need I say more?

But, the mother of it all was... Chemistry. I . hate . it .

I didn't start getting Chemistry until 1st year of senior high school (I guess it's equivalent to 10th grade in some other countries). Everyone told me that Chemistry was much more fun than Math and Physics. Then I got the subject and I was like "are you kidding me??". I found it to be simply.... illogical. I hated having to memorize the Periodic Table of Elements and I never got a hold of those Carbon chain and all :D. I had the subject all through high school and I'm glad that I had nice teachers for it, other wise it would've been a disaster.

To make matters worse, in the first year of university, everyone was obliged to take all kinds of general and basic subjects, such as English, Indonesian, PE, Calculus I and II, Basic Physics I and II, and... you guessed it: Basic Chemistry I and II, which was basically 3 years of high school chemistry squeezed into two semesters. Yuck.

The worst thing about it was that Chemistry (and other general subject such as PE) had nothing to do with my major, which was Geodetic Engineering. So I didn't even know the reason why they forced us to take those general subjects and wasted good hours on just trying to pass the exams. I passed chemistry in both semesters with C's.. good enough...hehehe. Needless to say that now I don't remember anything about Chemistry anymore.. lol.

This is an entry for:

The Rain Dance

2011-06-15T09:38:00.000+07:00

Having lived in Bogor, the Rain City for a few years now, I have grown to love rain. For me, rain is very much welcomed after a long bright - sunny - humid day. Everything just cools down and seems to be more relaxing. Well okay, not all the time, but when I'm at home, winding down in the afternoon, that's when I like rain the most.

Another person in the family who likes rain is my niece, Sarah. Have you ever played in the rain when you were little? Well she likes it too... of course her parents won't let her because she easily catches cold. But a few times, we let her do so.

Here's a picture collage of her playing in the rain in front of my house in Bogor. She was still 2.5 years old at the time of the picture. Can you see how much fun she was having? :) Such a precious moment.

This is an entry for :

GT: Favorite school subject

2011-06-09T09:00:00.000+07:00

English and Mathematics, hence down!

English, because I had good basics from the extra English courses I took, which has really helped me up till this very day. While I didn't have the best English teachers in my formal school and the way the subject was taught was seriously uninspiring, it was the only subject that I could just glide through :).. sorry I'm bragging a little.

Math, what can I say, i liked it a lot. I was not that good in it, I didn't get the best grades, but I really liked it. I wouldn't have become an engineer otherwise!

This is an entry for:

Walking at sundown

2011-06-08T08:12:00.001+07:00

The first time my fiancee came to visit me in Indonesia was in January 2010, and he was here for almost a month. At the time we have yet to decide on our future, whether we will stay together being in a long distance relationship and if so, how were we going to work it out. At the time, we figured out that we should just enjoy the time we had together and made the best out of it.

So we went all out.... 10 days of real backpacking across Java, plus some more days of road trip with my parents. Jakarta - Bandung - Yogyakarta - Solo - Malang - Mt. Bromo - Mt. Ijen - Surabaya - Semarang - Bandung - Garut - Pangandaran - Bandung. It was exhaustingly fun and exciting! Although looking back, we're not so sure if we will ever do such thing again.. :).

This is a picture my mom candidly took of me and the fiancee in Pangandaran Beach, during sunset. I tweaked it a bit just to get a bit of depth in the picture. What I love most about this picture is just the simplicity of a the moment captured. Just me and him, talking and walking next to each other. When you're in a long distance relationship, it's really the small things you miss the most...

This is an entry for:

On being ignorant

2011-06-02T23:24:00.000+07:00

Oh geez, I'm such a louzy friend :(.

The girl who sits next to me everyday at work had been taking afternoon/weekend classes to finish her bachelor study, and turns out that she had graduated on the 21st of May.... and I didn't know it until I saw someone congratulating her on facebook just today. I had all the time in the world to ask her every now and then on how her studies were going, and I barely did so. I genuinely like this girl, so how come I didn't pay attention?

Just goes the show on how ignorant I can be to the people around me. Bad bad bad. Again, I need to work on being more of a "people person".

GT: Favorite Teacher

2011-06-02T00:20:00.000+07:00

From kindergarten to graduate studies, I spent approximately 23 years on and off being a student. I've had so many teachers, some are better than others, but nonetheless I'm forever greatful for the education they had given me. That being said, it's not easy to pick a favorite teacher.

One of my favorite teacher would be Mrs. Li Yung (I hope this is the correct spelling), she was my teacher at the English course I took when I was in 5th grade of elementary school. You see, back in the day, English was not yet thought in elementary school, so my mom had to put me in an extra English course. Mrs. Li Yung was a great teacher, she gave me good basics, and if it weren't for her, my English wouldn't have been this good (not perfect, but pretty good).

Next to the teaching, she was also quite fun and creative. Around christmas time, all classes at the English course would make some singing, dancing, and drama performances. Mrs. Li Yung went the extra length to make a drama script for our class, coreographed a dance routine, made decorations and coached us for our show. Needless to say, we had a blast! I had more fun at the English course than I ever did in my formal elementary school. Too bad I don't have any picture of her :(.

My other, more recent, favorite teacher is Dr. Susan Steele-Dunne, my master's thesis supervisor. She really stucked by me for the whole 9 months of doing thesis. When I started doing thesis with her, I was a novice in hydrology and hydrological modelling, data assimilation, and on top of it, I was a crappy programmer. But she didn't give up on me. She replied all my distressed emails, and answered all my stupid questions. She helped me through everything, including the time when I faced a major set back when my harddrive broke down and I lost a month worth of data processing, and also when I discovered a major bug in my script just 2 weeks before my defence date. She was awsome :). At the end I got pretty good grade for my thesis, and I was even the first person in my class to graduate!

Here's a picture of her introducing the work of one of her master student at his graduation (unfortunately not on my graduation).

Water plants

2011-06-01T14:08:00.003+07:00

This is the first time for me to join the photo meme Just Beautiful. I'm posting a picture of some type of water hyacinth (sorry I'm really clueless with these things). I took this picture late November 2010, during my visit to Palau, a small archipelagic country in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines. I just snapped this while walking down the street of this lovely country. I'll keep in mind to post some more pictures from Palau.

This is an entry for:

GT: Latest Summer Pics

2011-05-31T21:23:00.000+07:00

Honestly, sometimes it feels strange to me to talk about summer in this part of the world. Living just about 6 degrees south of the equator, there's generally only two kinds of season : hot and very hot! lol. Or you can say there's the wet-rainy season and the dry season. But then again such classification barely applies to Bogor, the city I live in now. In this so called Rain City, it pretty much rains all year long, although it doesn't necessary mean it is "colder" than the rest of the country.

But anyhow... for this week GT's topic, I'm posting some picture collages from my trip to Bali just last week! It was mostly all work, since we were there for a 4 days meeting, but my colleagues and I managed to squeeze in some sightseeing and shopping time! Funny that back in 2010, I went to Bali 3 times, all for meetings, which meant I saw mosty just the airport and the hotel.... lol. At least this year I actually got to see other parts of this beautiful island.

Top: First day of meeting, all neat in suits and formal batiks.
Bottom: Last day of meeting, all ties are off! You can tell from the amount of mess on the table that we'd been working hard!

Sangeh - the Monkey Forest. Monkeys aside, this place is pretty nice, quiet and cool.

The lovely Pura Taman Ayun

Tanah Lot - beautiful but crowded with tourists

On fleeing

2011-05-10T09:46:00.001+07:00

As I've hinted in many posts, I'm currently in a long distance relationship. By long, I mean 5 hours time difference -14 hours of flight - see each other twice a year - long. And I have some legal obligations that prevents me from leaving work at the moment.

See here's the thing, in 2007 I received a scholarship to study in Netherlands. I was allowed to take leave of absence on one condition: I had to return to Indonesia, back to my office (I work for the government, btw) and stay for 5 years, or else I will have to pay back twice the scholarship. At the time, I really didn't expect anything will come to my life that would make me wanna leave the country. But, as you know, I meet my fiancee, the love of my life. I returned to work in February 2010... so by far I have 4 years left of the contract.

So why don't I just pay back the damn scholarship and go back to Netherlands? I'd give anything to be able to do that, but the thing is the grand total of my scholarship was about 40.000 Euros. Which means I have to pay back 80.000 Euros. In all honesty, I can't think of how I can come up with such money. Even if the fiancee and I bust our asses off, it's just impossible to save that much. So the best scenario is.. to wait 4 years.

There's this other girl in my office whose husband works in a neighbouring country. Not that long distance, by comparison, but long enough. The difference is that she's only worked here for a little over 1 year, and her initial contract is only 5 years or 50 million rupiah. The way I see it, 50 million rupiah is really nothing compared to 80.000 euros. I can easily lend 50 million rupiah right now and be done with it. Well apparently, that's what she's doing.

So last I heard, this girl is going to leave the office (and the country) within the coming week. Good for her. But, man .... am I jealous. So friggin' jealous.

To my girlfriend, you know it's you I'm talking about ;).... Very happy for you!!! Good luck with the future life in the Lion City! Best wishes :*.

With tired eyes, tired minds, tired souls, we slept

2011-05-10T09:21:00.000+07:00

That's the title of One Tree Hill Season 3 Episode 16, which, to my opinion, is yet the best episode of the series. Speaking of depression and suicide and the dark water and all in my last post, reminded me of this particular episode. Tired of being invincible, bullied, ignored to the point of depression, one day Jimmy Edwards took a gun to school, held hostage 7 other students, and at the end killed himself.

Loneliness is a scary thing. In one way or another, everyone wants to exist, everyone wants to be noticed. Like sometimes what it takes is just a simple "hello" to make a difference in your day. And being lonely in the crowd, is the worst kind of loneliness. You just sit there and your mind starts wondering off and playing tricks on you. Dangerous. In the words of Jimmy Edwards:

"You see one day I spent a whole day in this school without a single person looking at me or talking to me. And I realized that was the best day I'd had in a long time. The day that nobody noticed me at all. The day I stopped being there. That was the best day. Well that was kinda depressing so I went home and took a antidepressant. And then I took another one. And then for fun I took twelve more. My mom and the doctors called it an accident and then 2 weeks later when I got back to school nobody noticed. It was like I never left. I guess that’s the upside to not being there in the first place right? Nobody misses you when you’re gone. "

Well obviously most people won't end up killing themselves when they're lonely and depressed. But we have to acknowledge that some people do take it harder than others. Just because we think it's all fine, that it's just one single bad day in our life, it may just be the worst day of someone else's life. Just because you're strong enough to pull through, doesn't mean everyone's as strong as you are. Especially when it comes to teenagers.

Man, high school can be really cruel. I remember in junior high, I was being called a slut, just because my shirt was a little tighter and my skirt was a tad shorter than other girls'. In all honesty, I was just physically growing up so fast in that year, that my skirts and pants became too short too fast! :-P.... So I had bad words written about me in the girl's toilet, and if I erased them one day, someone else will write more the next day. Talk about teenage cruelty. But, I was pretty lucky it didn't go any further... and it didn't hurt to be among the top students academically, either. One day I just said: "Well, try beating me academically, then y'all can trash me all you want." .... and they never did beat me, so ... whatever, it stopped after a while. Yeah, I was kinda bitchy too... hehehehe.

The bottom line is, the lesson I've had to remind myself over and over again, is to be compassionate, considerate, and generous to the people around you. Even a simple nod, a short "hi", a small exchange of "how are you" can go a long way.

We don't want a Jimmy Edwards in our lives, we don't want to have that in our conscious, knowing that we could've done something to ease the pain.

KEITH: I’m not gonna leave you here, son. I’m not gonna do that and I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve been there. I’ve bought the gun and I planned on using it, okay. I’ve been there and I wanna tell you something. It gets better.
JIMMY: Not this. It can’t.
KEITH: It does, Jimmy. That pain in your stomach, that pain in your heart, it goes away. That voice in your head that's saying there’s no way out, it’s wrong, Jimmy. Would you please, please just believe me. It gets better.
JIMMY: It won’t. Not after this. I can’t take this back. I can’t erase this. She’s gonna die.
KEITH: You don’t know that.
JIMMY: I just... I wanted... I wanted them to leave me alone. I just... I wanted them to like me.
KEITH: I understand, son. That’s all we all want. That's all any of us want.
JIMMY: I’m not here. I’m not here.
KEITH: Jimmy please, it’s gonna be okay son. it's gonna be okay.
JIMMY: But it hurts! It hurts. It always hurts.
KEITH: I know. Please. Please.
JIMMY: I’m sorry.

Suppressed Memories

2011-05-09T19:39:00.001+07:00

One of the reality TV shows I quite like is Ruby, a show about a woman fighting obesity. What I like about the show compared to such as the Biggest Loser, is that it doesn't just focus on losing weight, diet and exercises. Instead it dedicates quite a big portion of the show on the psychology behind her eating disorder. As it's becoming more clear in the recent season, Ruby can't remember anything of her childhood from 4 - 13 years old, and that it's most likely because she had a major trauma. Between her eating disorder and avoidance issues, I think a lot of people can relate to her to some extent.

Reflecting on myself, as I try to think back and remember stuff... I find that, I can't remember everything, or should I say, I refuse to remember a lot of things. Like, I can remember about my childhood as much as the next person... say from kindergarten until high school, I remember a lot of stuff. But funny enough, I don't remember much of my university years, and that's a big gap, since I spent almost 7 years trying to get my bachelor degree, and considering it was really not that long ago. I'm not saying that I have amnesia. If I think hard, I do remember most of them. But I don't like remembering them. It's like I would press the "skip" button every time my mind wondered back to that time.

You might wanna ask me why?, what happened?. I can't say much about it, except that I was in a bad place, a bad relationships, making bad decisions. If I have to psycho-analyze myself, I was depressed. So depressed that at some point I actually considered suicide. I was that close. And when you lived your life like a zombie, there's really not much to remember about, everyday was just like the last day, nothing mattered.

See, I do remember. But I hate remembering them. Amnesia sounds a whole lot better than remembering. Suppressing memories, that's what I've been doing.

They say you have to embrace your past to move on with your future. I do accept my past. But, boy, do I hate it.

This post isn't really getting anywhere... I'm really just rambling and blurting out words. No wise conclusions, no revelations. Just words.

But tell me, who doesn't have suppressed memories? Who doesn't want to forget something? Who has not binged or drank or do whatever stupid things, just to forget?

And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

[John Steinbeck - East of Eden]

On weddings

2011-05-09T09:32:00.000+07:00

Ever since I came back from the Netherlands, I feel like I'm surrounded with weddings. One invitation after another. Family, close friends, not so close friends, acquaintances, everyone. To be honest, I don't like going to weddings, especially a wedding of someone from my extended family, because it always ends up with the same question for me: when are you getting married?.

I'm in that stage in my life where the majority of the people in my social circle are either married, getting married, or having babies. Seriously, my facebook friends profile pics are mainly babies and kids. Even the blogger circle I'm entering through GirlsTalk and some other blogs I follow are mainly from young mothers. Don't get me wrong, I really have nothing against them, I'm happy for them, I enjoy very much reading their blogs. If anything... I'm slightly jealous. I'm just another girl, brought up in a regular Indonesian family, where marriage and kids are kind of a big deal.

When I was still in high school, I had this major crush on an older guy. I dare to say he was my first love. And I used to picture myself dating this guy, and my "plan" was to get married to him right after I graduated college at the age of 22... hahahahaha.... Needless to say the "plan" fell through. I did end up dating the guy in my first year of university, which lasted for 6 months only.. lol.. so much for the "grand plan"! :-D... and on top of it I didn't graduate at 22 anyway, hihihi... Fast forward 13 years and here I am.

A lot of things have happened in my life, a lot of experiences, good and bad.... and they kinda changed my view. Some years ago, I came to the conclusion that I don't need to be married to be happy... heck, I don't even need to be in a relationship to be happy. The 5 years relationship I had with the last boyfriend had let me down in a major way, that I almost didn't believe in it anymore.

And yet here I am anyway, entering the 4th year of my relationship with my fiancee, going stronger, and hoping for a wedding in our future. The other day we saw wedding pictures of our good friend, which was so lovely, and I told him: "Lovely pictures, right? Makes me slightly jealous." , and he replied: "Yes, very nice, makes me want a wedding too".

I know I'm rambling a bit, but at the point is, at the end of the day, I still want a wedding. I still want be in a marriage with my fiancee. I just need to be patient. 4 years is a long time, but I truly hope we'll make it through.

GT: Best Summer Ever!

2011-05-05T09:24:00.000+07:00

Obviously I haven't been the most inspired blogger lately. But today's GT theme is just one I can't miss: the most memorable summer of your life. Ha, that's easy. For me it would have to be the summer of 2008.

Summer 2008 was my first summer in Europe, and the first summer for me and the fiancee as a couple. One of the perks of being a student in Europe was that you get a loooong summer holiday, and having been pretty tired of the 'moody' Dutch weather, we decided to borrow dad's car and flee to Austria for my birthday week. So we did it, booked a room at a hotel in a small town called Oberperfuss, about 15 km west of Innsbruck, one of the many holiday towns around the Alps, and drove all the way, nethelands - germany - austria.

Now, I know it's a bit strange to be going to the Alps in the summer, since it is after all most famous for winter sports holiday. But my fiancee is more of a summer - mountain person, and he convinced me that the Alps is pretty amazing in the summer too. And he was so right, the mountains were breathtaking, and it was fun to still see piles of snow here and there :).

The highlight of the holiday was, of course, my birthday. In the morning when I got out of the shower, I saw a pile of gifts on the bed stand... and then we went out, drive to the Alps and at one of the viewing points close to the Italian border, we stopped, and gave me another present... a beautiful little necklace :). Who knew that my fiancee could be so romantic!! And then we drive around again, crossing the border to Italy - which was funny because everyone still speaks German there, lol - and went back to the hotel..... and.... more presents!
Best birthday ever!!

Enough talking, here are some pics from the holiday. Cheers!

GT: Celebrity to die for?

2011-04-16T00:34:00.003+07:00

I missed last week's GT: Food to die for... The past week had been pretty busy for me.... between all the meetings and going back and forth from Bogor to Jakarta to get to the meetings, and trying to have some kind of social life, I was spent and uninspired.. Besides, I actually couldn't put a finger on which food I crave most for... too many good foodies in this world! ;).

So... I'm trying to catch up now... but honestly this week's GT theme about favorite celebrity is pretty difficult too. While I love tv series, movies, and music, I'm just not really in that place in my life when I idolized someone anymore. Throughout my lifetime I've changed idol a lot of times, and quite randomly ... from Michael Jackson to Jerry Yan ... hehehe...

But I guess if I have to really pick now, I would say two names: Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. I fell in love with their acting in Philadelphia. Brilliant movie with brilliant actors,.....and I continue to love their works ever since, although I admit I haven't watched all of their movies.

On a short note about Denzel, while he mainly acts - brilliantly - as "the good guy" in most of his works, I love him most when he was playing as the bad cop in Training Day... it was just so nice to watch. When you got a great actor playing the villain... I swear I almost always wish that the villain would win at the end of the movie! Lol.

On becoming a duck

2011-04-16T00:08:00.000+07:00

Meredith: So you and Lexie..
Alex: What?
Meredith: I mean I'm just saying you and Lexie are a thing now, not just...
Alex: I'm acting like a duck.
Meredith: What?
Alex: I figure if you walk like a duck and quack like a duck, you eventually start to feel like a duck. And Lexie is nice and normal and healthy. I'm acting like a guy who can stick with nice, normal and healthy.
Meredith: You're becoming a duck.
Alex: I am becoming a duck.

[Grey's Anatomy - Shiny Happy People]

Better things to do

2011-04-04T12:12:00.000+07:00

There are times like this when I stop and wonder, what am I really doing with my life? I go to work everyday from 8 to 4, working , or pretend to work, at this job I love to hate. I go home, sit around doing whatever until it's bed time... and before I know it, it's morning again, back to the same routine. And I do have better things to do :

Learn Dutch. My Dutch is still as bad as it was 2 years ago :(
Exercise. Here I am complaining every day about being overweight, and yet I can't get my self off the couch and work a sweat.
Organize my room. It's one big mess right now.
Catch up on my reading. All those unread - unfinished books sitting there gathering dust.

And everyday I keep saying, tonight after work, I'm gonna do this and that. And every night, I wound up watching TV or browsing the internet or playing games.

Why? I'm not sure. But this is so typically me. Stalling. Avoiding. Instead of writing about it I should just get my act together and do it. Stop being lazy. Stop making excuses.

Ah. Demons inside.

I was here

2011-04-01T10:31:00.000+07:00

I guess in one way or another, everyone wants to be recognized. Everyone wants to leave their stamp, their footprints in this world. To let the world know that they exist. To shout "I was here".

What's my Last Song Syndrome?

2011-03-31T20:35:00.000+07:00

This week's GT topic is the Last Song Syndrome, basically the song that's been sticking in your head. Like the song you keep playing in your head, humming it, just can't shake it off kind of song. Well this one's easier than last week's topic!

I'm an avid TV series addict and one of my favorite series is One Tree Hill. This series is well known for featuring good music/artists. Anyway, earlier this week as I was doing a One Tree Hill season 8 marathon when they featured this Irish female artist: Laura Izibor. And I liked her right away! She's a bit in the same playing field as Alicia Keys, and boy, does she have a great voice.

The song featured in the series (season 8 episode 6) was titled Can't Be Love, and it's been my LSS 'til today. Hope you'll like her too!

On paying attention

2011-03-29T21:10:00.001+07:00

Last friday I was in the I-don't-care mood... I didn't care to put on make up (not that I normally put much on anyway), I tied my messy hair into an ugly ponytail... All in all I looked awful. Nobody seemed to notice, until late in the afternoon, a guy that I've only worked with very few times showed up at my office room, looked at me and said: "Hey, what's up with you? You look so messed up!"

This afternoon, the same guy showed up again, and the first thing he said to me was: "Ah, now you look better and more lively!". And I thought, well.. of all people, he would be the one noticing... some random guy who I barely know. While the other people who works with me and spend 8 hours a day everyday with me can't seem to be bothered.

To come to think of it, I must admit that I don't pay attention or make comments that much to the people around me either. Maybe when you spend so much time in one environment, with the same people day in day out, you kind of stop noticing. It's like this: people whom I meet rarely would surely notice when I gain weight for example, but those who see me everyday may not notice so much... because it's a gradual change.

I don't know if it's good or bad. When you care about the people around you, you should pay attention, right? But even when you spend so much time with someone, does it automatically give you the right to make "personal" comments? But then again, isn't making comments also some sort of gesture that you care, that you at least acknowledge their existence in your life? Where's the line between caring and being nosy?

Hehehe... am I even making any sense here? Maybe I'll never get the hang of this being a "people's person" thing :-p.