Getting Ready For Malaysia Trip

Yo yo yo!! Wassap brow??! Hope your day is running well and now I am gonna post with Bahasa Indonesia.

Memasuki tanggal 28 Januari berarti semakin dekat dengan tanggal perjalananku trip bersama ortu 4 hari 3 malam ke Malaysie. Sesuai dengan schedule, aku akan berangkat hari Rabu malam tanggal 29 Jan, bermalam satu malam di LCC Terminal KL, kemudian ortuku menyusul keesokan paginya tanggal 30 Jan dan kita cuss menuju kota Kuala Lumpur.

Pada awalnya aku berencana untuk sekalian mengunjungi Singapura, namun setelah melakukan banyak searching, menghitung durasi trip yang relatif singkat plus berbarengan dengan peak season libur Imlek, dan juga nggak mau bikin ortu lelah naik-turun bus dan kereta menggeret koper kesana-kemari, akhirnya diputuskan saja untuk trip kali ini bertema Malaysia Trip.

Why do I take my parents coming along for this trip?
Karena kedua ortuku tercinta memang belum pernah travel overseas. Jadi suatu hari di bulan April 2013 Air Asia buka promo free seat untuk travel di tahun 2014. Aku yang masih membawa sisa-sisa semangat dari India Trip waktu itu, tiba-tiba mendapat wangsit untuk membookingkan tiket buat ortu traveling ke Malaysia. Hap hap hap, kurang dari tiga hari akhirnya aku dapat tanggal yang pas, yaitu di akhir Januari 2014 bertepatan dengan libur Imlek dan long weekend. Tanpa pikir panjang dan dengan mengucapkan bismillahirrohmanirrohim, aku bookinglah dua tiket buat ortuku tersayang.

Tau nggak, my dad itu sering sekali bercerita tentang seorang temannya yang berprofesi sebagai seorang tour guide ke negara-negara Asia Tenggara spt Singapura, Malaysia, and Thailand. Dan beliau juga suka cerita kalo waktu muda dulu sering bepergian ke sini, ke sana, ke mari, untuk keperluan dagangnya, tapi sayang sekali belum pernah sekalipun ke luar negeri karena tak ada urusan dan sanak keluarga yang akan dikunjungi. Untuk traveling di dalam negeri saja, paling jauh itu ke Bandung. Ke tempat-tempat populer seperti Yogyakarta, Surabaya, dan Bali juga belum pernah (next time I will plan to take him to Yogya ah..).

Oh iya, beliau adalah seorang pedagang yang berniaga alat-alat tulis. He is a melancholic family man, never get angry but always has an emotional feeling to his children, esp to his 2 daughters. Every time my dad talking about his tour guide friend, I can see in his eyes that he has the same desire to travel overseas, tapi sayang kesempatan masih belum datang menyapanya. So I guess this is the time. Thanks Air Asia to make this (travel cheap to overseas) possible!!

What about me myself?
Aku sendiri waktu itu belum booking tiket, karena masih belum yakin bakal bisa menemani ortu karena pada saat itu (April 2013) yang ada di pikiran adalah: Januari 2014 nanti aku sudah bekerja, bakal sulit minta ijinnya, dsb, dst...

Namun skenario Allah berkata lain, alhamdulillah status pekerjaanku sampai saat ini masih belum jelas, sehingga akhir Desember 2013 kemarin aku bisa membooking tiket buat diriku sendiri tanpa khawatir untuk minta ijin dari pekerjaan (sebenarnya khawatir juga sih, karena masih jobless, hehehe...).

Soo there it goes. Selama 4 hari 3 malam di negeri  jiran nanti, kami berencana untuk mengunjungi:
- Day 1: Pasar-pasar dan Mall di sekitaran Bukit Bintang
- Day 2: Batu Cave, Masjid Jamek
- Day 3: Skybridge Petronas Twin Tower

Nggak banyak sih memang, mengingat kali ini membawa ortu jadi harus di-schedule senyaman mungkin supaya ortu tetap senang dan nggak gempor.

Oke dech sekian dulu. Wish us luck for our trip!!!

Btw, sambil ngeposting, aku menemukan idolaku 'menuju puncak, gemilang cahaya' masa SMP dulu. Setelah 10 tahun berlalu ternyata dia tampak tak berubah... Tapi kok aku cekikikan geli sendiri menontonnya... Hehehe...

This Is Too Touchy To Be True!!!

A little baby cries when her mom singing a sad, emotional song! Ooo My Gawd!!! How can a little baby develop such an emotional sense?!!

The mommy's voice is soo beautiful!! I also tear up watching this :'(

Easy Tasty Homemade Fries

If I may choose what kind of specific theme I would like to turn my blog into, I probably would consider for a food blog. So, today I am gonna share the recipe about how to cook easy and tasty homemade fries, or also known as french fries. The key point to make a crunchy, Mc Donald-style of french fries is to blanch the potato into boiling water before frying it.

Here is the recipe:
- 2 big size of potatoes
- 1 pcs chicken sausage
- cooking oil
- water
- salt and pepper
- chilli sauce

How to make:
- Peel of the potato skin, cut into french fries pieces
- Boil + 200 ml of water, simmer the potato into the boiled water for + 2 minutes
- Strain the potato with the strainer, let it dry and cool down a bit
- Heat the cooking oil, set the flame to medium-high
- Deep fry the potato's pieces into the hot oil the until golden-yellow in color
- Lift the fries from the pan, place in the iron strainer to release excess oil
- Put the warm fries into the bowl based with kitchen tissue, sprinkle with salt and pepper
- Shake the bowl until all part of fries seasoned with salt and pepper
- Serve on the plate while it's warm, completed with fried sausage and chilli sauce
- Enjoy your yummy and tasty homemade fries

Tips:
- Deep fry the potato with hot oil. Frying the potato with less hot oil may cause the potato to absorb too much oil
- Garlic or chilli powder can also be added for the seasoning

Playback Singer

I love Bollywood movie Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The first time I watched it was on TV, just from the middle part. Realizing that the setting was in Amritsar, I was like O My Gawd!!!! I've been there!!!

Not long after, I bought a DVD of Bollywood movie collection then watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi from the beginning and... it really swung my emotion up and down like a roller coaster, bringing up laugh and tears successively. What a hilarious movie it is!

And also... never talk about Bollywood movie without its song. But as usual, it was not the actors that sing, they just act like singing and dancing while songs are mostly sung by the playback singer.

As I love every single song in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, I download it and tried to find it on youtube. And guess... I found the playback singer of my favorite song Tujh Mein Rab Dikta Hai, Shreya Ghoshal. Her voice is soooo awesome!

Today...

I cooked tomato omelette for breakfast which was very very aaawesommmeee... I have no idea what to cook with my leftover onions and tomato, so I chopped them all, sauteed in the pan, meanwhile it's been sauteed I beat 1 egg, added pinch of salt, I put the sauteed onion and tomato into the beaten egg, then I put them back to the pan and there it was my omelette. Did I take a picture of it? Nope. I was just too hungry and not really much into taking picture of meals before eating (but sometime I do love to, hehehe...). And also, the omelette is best eaten while it's hot, so I didn't want to have cold omelette for breakfast.

It's been rain here for the past 1 week and no chance of getting the perfect dry clothes, so today I was so busy moving my clothing hanger here and there, avoiding windy raindrops. Thanks God the rain became slower in the afternoon so that I decided to go to grocery to buy detergent, pads, shampoo, eggs, and noodles. I got a new plate for purchasing the detergent btw, hihihi...

And... What else... I dunno... Sometimes I am just overthink about this and that... Ended up having no words to explain.

That's pretty much all. I am now getting ready to take my parents traveling to Malaysia at the end of this month. Wish me luck!!

You Know What...

I eat meat very rarely, approximately like once in 2 week. Not because I can't afford to buy or cook it, I just don't really like it. But once I eat meat, it is mostly either chicken or fish. So lately, I have been eating chicken almost every day, especially when I stayed at aunty's house on the past 2 days. Since those days, I can clearly observe that my body doesn't feel really good: like my temperature is getting high, my mouth often feels acid, I get unpleasant body odor (BO), and the worst is... my pee smells like chicken. Really. I don't know what's going on, but I guess my body doesn't really match with meat anymore. I remember one day, I read a book about a blood type-diet suggesting that the A blood type, which is me, is better to be vegetarian. So I guess... that book is somewhat true.

Cooking The Chapati

After being stuck for so long in searching the ingredients to cook chapati, finally, last week, I have successfully cooked it along with the vegetable curry. The special ingredients I got are: whole wheat flour and instant curry paste.

Whole wheat flour (known as Atta flour)

I had searched for the whole wheat flour in supermarkets from the last 2 month but sadly I couldn't find any. I finally found it at the Indian mini market in Pasar Baru, Jakarta. The unique things is, this is a Bogasari brand (which is Indonesian product) but they put Taj Mahal picture on its packaging, completed with the Poori recipe on the back cover. The 1 kg package was sold for Rp 14,500, and Rp 28,000 for 2 kg package. The flour smells really like the Quaker Oats, the color is a bit brownish, and the particle is rough coz it also consists of sprinkles of wheat.

Thai Curry Paste

I had never put attention to the instant seasoning every time I go to supermarket before I hunted for the instant curry paste to accompany my chapati cooking. In Hypermart and Giant supermarket, it's the Thailand curry pastes that are mostly available, with various flavors and brands. I choose to try Mae Ploy Red Curry Paste that costed Rp 10,500 but... the smell was strongly like terasi (just as mentioned in the package that it contains crustacea) and the taste was not as I expected. Actually, I had also found one Indian curry paste and Japanese curry bricks, but their prices are just too high.

Ok then, let's move on to the recipe:

Chapati

Ingredients:

- 1 cup whole wheat flour (in market known as Atta flour)

- 3/4 cup of water

- a pinch of salt

- little drop of cooking oil

How to make:

- Put the flour in a large bowl, sprinkle with salt, mix gently

- Create the hole in the middle of flour, add water gradually, mix until become a soft dough

- Sprinkle the dough with more flour if it's still a bit sticky

- Add some drop of cooking oil, continue mixing the dough until the perfect softness

- Rest the dough for 15 minutes

- Now its time for burning: pre-heat your skillet or non-sticky teflon

- Form the dough into + 20 cm log shape, divide into 4 smaller pieces

- Rounded the pieces into ball shape

- Take 1 ball, sprinkle with flour, evenly flatten with rolling pin until + 3 mm thick (use your feelings, not too thin, not too thick)

- Put the flatten dough on the hot teflon, set the flame to medium-high 

- The small bubbles will appear within 30 seconds, turn the chapati to the other side as the bubbles appear

- With the cotton napkin or the frying spoon, press and rotate the chapati to evenly distribute the heat to every side 

- The bigger bubble may also appear, this is the indication of a smooth chapati

- Turn the chapati one more time if needed, then put in the plate

- Apply some rub of butter to the hot chapati *optional

Tips: 

- Knead the dough until it's really soft, a little bit of sticky is fine

- Make sure to flatten the dough evenly, not too thin or not too thick

- Make sure the teflon or skillet is really hot before burning the chapati, the less hot teflon may result the less soft chapati

Vegetable Curry

Ingredients:

- 2 medium size potatoes, cut each potato into 8 pieces 

- 1 medium size of carrot, cut into dice pieces

- 1/2 cups of green pea, or can be replaced with leunca

- 2 pieces of tomato, chopped

- 1/2 pieces of onion, cut into fine pieces

- 1 piece of garlic, chopped

- half pack of curry paste

- 200 ml of water

- 2 tbsp cooking oil

- salt and pepper

How to make:

- Heat the cooking oil, saute the onion and garlic

- Add in the potatoes and carrots, stir well for 1 mint

- Add in the water, green peas and chopped tomatoes, simmer in medium flame for 3 mint

- Add the curry paste, salt and pepper until desired taste, simmer again with low flame until the water reduced and become thick gravy 

Tips:

- Add salt and pepper just after adding the curry paste to avoid over salt

- Select the appropriate taste of curry paste that suits your curry

Happy cooking!

Indonesian People & Money

Just found this Chinese man speaking the truth about what's Indonesian people doing with their money...

"Indonesian people prefer to spend their money on shop..."

Somewhat true... Yes. It's very true.

Mirror

What's the use of mirror? To give reflection of course, so that we can see if there's something wrong in our face, outfit, etc. In my opinion, the need of mirror in the woman's room is a must. Not only to give correction at the face but also to get the reflection of whole body from head to toe. I am not talking about aesthetic thingy--coz it's very clear what's the function of the mirror for woman's beauty--instead, I am talking about the health and body image awareness.

The first time when a woman notice that her body gets fat is--I am 100 percent sure--when she sees her reflection on the mirror. How can she gets to notice that if she only has the small 15cmx20cm mirror in her room?  How can she maintain her body shape without the help of mirror? To be more advance, how can a woman recognizes every inches of her body if the big mirror is not there? So my dear, it's a must for you to have, at least, a long mirror that reach your middle part of body to intensively maintain your shape and health. I personally suggest you my dear, once a while-or frequently if possible, get undressed and stand in front of your mirror and observe your body thoroughly. If there's some annoying fat on the tummy that can be pinched for more than 4 cms, start taking real actions to burn them: such as doing exercise and revising your diet. Trust me, being healthy and having a good feeling of your body shape at the same time are precious. So, always maintain them at your best level.

Oh ya, one more. Once a while, take your mirror in front of your face while you are eating. From that, you can see how your eating expression and the way you chew your food. I myself had never really done that until one day my friend told me that I was chewing food with front teeth. So one day, took my mirror to really see how it looked. And yes, he's right. I did chewing food with front teeth, which may not seem pleasant to some people. So yeah, I am a bit changing my chewing style now. Thanks mirror!

Welcoming 2014

Hello Blogger. It's been looooong time I am not blogging and please point all the blame to...... my Google Chrome (GC)! GC has been my default browser for quite long time and I loved it so much. But lately, I don't know what happened, every time I open blogger and try to look on statistic and write a new post, the page is always broken. I guess its because of the annoying ad. I just left it for some days but when I tried back it always showed the same blank page. Ouch!!! So from the past 3 weeks I have been using Mozilla Firefox to log on blogger but as it's my secondary browser and I feel much more default to GC, it resulted the lack of my blogging activities. So my dear readers, if you know what is going on to GC or if this case is also familiar to you, please share with me how to fix my GC :)

Soooo, as today is already the first day of 2014, I wish you all a Happy New Year!!!! May everything in life goes toward a better way and we can successfully achieve our goals. And don't forget to stay positive, positive, positive. Always!!!

What about resolution?

Hhmmm... I am  not very sure that I have any... But two things that are sure: I wish for a nice and settled job in very soon and a smooth traveling time with my parents (as I already arranged a travel plan with my parents to Malaysia and Singapore).

Soooo what's been going on in life.....??? Ok, to make it simple let me list it below

1. On 9 Dec 2013 I was (forcefully) flying back to hometown to enroll an exam for a job at Indonesian Health Insurance. I was soo in tension for this because at the beginning of the form submission, I was asked by my parents to submit my form in hometown. This selection will be held in a long gradual stages and to make it efficient and less complicated, I just wanted to submit it here in nearby office. But they insisted me to post it to hometown with the reason that the chance in hometown was way bigger. As always, I was so helpless to refuse my parents command so that I couldn't bargain anymore. I flew to hometown at 9-Dec evening, attended the exam on 10-Dec morning, and flew back to Jakarta on 11-Dec early morning to keep my promise to a kind lady coz I was hired to assist a research in her hospital.
2. How's the hometown-exam's result? I passed. But it required me to go back to hometown for the second exam on 22-Dec.
3. And... I got a good-breaking news to make it more like a drama, hahaha... I also passed the first stage of government exam and I should go for the final exam on 21 Dec. I told this to Mom and she (as always) insisted me to keep going for the hometown's exam. Then I convinced here that it would be a wasting time, energy, and money (as the airplane ticket on holiday season's sucks!!). How come I run here and there wasting everything for that hometown exam? Haven't I told every one that I initially wanted to submit my form to the nearby office so that it would be more simple and efficient? So there it was. Mom seemed to get the point of my argument and she finally said, do your best on 21 Dec-exam.
4. I did the exam for government job on 21-Dec in my campus. It was a psychological test, following by the interviewed on 23-Dec. And guess who was interviewing me?? My ex-boss at the campus library! FYI, I was working as freelance in my campus library for 1 year and 2 month and she was my boss. Soo... that interviews went little awkward and less formal. She asked me, why did you apply for this post? Don't you know that by working here, you'll not earn much. Don't you think of being lecturer instead of being a lab assistant?

That's pretty much all. Now I am feeling so content for all God's blessing for me, with all surprising rizki that He showers on me. Now I am still waiting for the announcement for that government job that is planned to be announced on the first or second week of January. No matter how the result will be, that will surely be the best for me. If I got accepted then I am ready to be a civil servant but if I didn't accepted, I am ready to seek for another jobs then :)

Happy New Year 2014!!!!