Another Victoria's Secrets

Since Hollywood movies were banned for few months in Indonesia and we don't have the cables here in my aunt's house, I hid myself between DVDs whenever I'm in stress. Actually, it's almost every night that I'm stressed out. Lucky there are these DVDs, so my mood came back normally for the next day's long hours at work. Here are some of what I watched:


The Other Woman is taken from "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits" by Ayelet Waldman, a drama about life perspective of a second wife about what comes after love: marriage with a divorced guy and the acceptance of her step son while she's still bearing with her own daughter's death. Portman delivers the message so well here, another brilliant work of hers to watch. This is a bit heavy drama, don't watch this when you're dealing with heavy problems yourself (but then again, perhaps you can just take the lessons from here).

I am back on normal Jakarta's daily pace now, working my ass 9 to 5 everyday. As yesterday my sister and I failed on trying tennis (we should be a member to use the tennis court at night time) so I decided to check on my project site on Gandaria City. It was 9.30 p.m. already when we got there (it was so sweet that my lil sis offered to accompany me) and we decided to watch a movie.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 3D was the only option next to Kung Fu Panda, so we watched the movie and be amused by the super hi-tech effects. I love this movie not less than the other Transformerses before. The only thing I wanted to protest was that Carly was wearing high heels in all of those panic running in the ruins of Chicago skyscrapers. She must not comfortable in those--tho I'm pretty sure Rosie Huntington-Whiteley didn't really wear them all the time.

Overall, the movie satisfied me. Perhaps because this was my first box office movie in theatre after months of the Hollywood movie case in Indonesia. Perhaps because it was on 3D that the pictures amused me more. Perhaps it's simply because it's that good. But mostly, because I really needed some adrenaline after all the stress. Lol.

My sister and I just couldn't resist when we found these vintage cereal tins in one of the alleys in the supermarket. We really couldn't which is the best, so we just bought both of them. They're sold each with two packs of the corn flakes inside, so we got four large packages of cereal for months' breakfast now. I know y'all love these, too!

Today is Indonesia's 66th Independence Day and I'm so glad for a day off in the middle of the week. I desperately need this :) Wish everyone to have the boiling spirit today!

Finally, after almost two years camera-less, I bought a new digicam as my old Kodak M873 was broken and relied only on the Blackberry's limited camera to everything. After doing a little research between Canon and Olympus, I decided to buy this Panasonic Lumix FH5, as it was said as the best result for interior and in the dark. The Leica lens and its lightweight design had helped me a lot to decide. I actually wanted the GF2 but for now, it's ok to have the pocket size one... I hope the images on my blog posts will be much better with it. Thank God :)

I gathered some tips here during my stay in the city for you, if you ever wanna go to the city thick with culture and history.

1. Riding on Becak. You have to know standard price for becak, because they usually mark up 3-5x higher for tourists. Ask locals to find out about normal price before asking the becak driver to get you somewhere.


2. Shopping in Malioboro. You also need to know the normal price for anything here for they don't give fix prices. Better check out the prices in the shop so you'll know how low you can bargain for the stuff on the street. Check out Beringharjo market for even cheaper stuff.


3. Getting a Taxi. Not too many empty taxis are there on the streets, especially the less-trafficked roads. You will need to have 2-3 driver contact numbers, whether it's from the company or personal. If possible, do the bargaining on the phone because they usually avoid to use the argo meters.

I met Maartje and Anna last night at Grand Indonesia and on the way home I was thinking while I was driving, and got a rough conclusion about guys around me. Perhaps around you, too. Here's what I got:

1. The Fools
This is the type of guys who use cheap tricks, cheesy lines and lame excuses to get the girls. They thought (and act) as if they were the coolest, most handsome guys in the world, while they actually look like a clown or just a silly guy around. Actually they can be fun and funny, but the way they act and speak as if they're the best thing makes us sick. This kind of guys will hang around less than two-three (sometimes just one) week if we know how to be firm with them.

2. The Kinds
This is when a guy is kind and has special place in our heart but too kind to be our mate. This kind of guys are always nice, come handy, and always flatter us with true praises. But somehow they are not "good" enough to be our boyfriend, tho they worship us as the greatest or smartest or cutest or sexiest or kindest girl on earth. Too bad, we don't have any intention to go on further because they aren't what we're looking for for a future husband.

3. The Friends
This is the boys who no matter what will always be a friend. Or that you think as a friend (even tho if they do have feelings for you). They are fun, spontaneous, good listener, agree (or disagree) with your thoughts, right you when you're wrong, respect you as a fine woman, but don't dare (or simply not willing) to go further on. They will always be there for us, even tho they have girlfriends, and will fight for our honor. We feel safe with them as if we are their sister.

4. The Dreams
This exists--as what it's named--just in our imagination. This is classified as unreachable, untouchable guys, and when they actually do, it usually just a fake (perhaps he has certain motive) and normally don't last. They could be the most handsome, true geniuses, coolest guys you've ever known about but better be without. It's like they think of us as "The Kinds" for them: we may have a special place in their hearts, but still not good enough to be with.

I guess these four are the main categories I can classify all the boys around me. And when I count them all, no.2 and no.3 have the most members in it because I'm such a friend keeper. Lol. This is just my slight thought, and I never really make any survey or research about it, this is just my personal conclusion. But this certainly works for me ;)

By the way, to see the four points above, I would definitely get no guys at all for it's certainly a no-no for guys no.1, and I avoid (also hard for me) to fall for guys no.2 and no.3, and the no.4 is really a useless. Now you all should be agree with me about how hard it is to find a decent bachelor around. ROFL.

Hi all! I just got back from Yogyakarta and it was tiring. But I have a whole bunch of stories and photos I desperately wanna share with you and so here I am, all red-burnt and sleepy still working on my Macbook trying to pour everything that I absorbed from the past 4 days I spent.



I woke up by 3 a.m. and hurriedly get ready to go to the airport by taxi. It was 4.30 a.m. and I was waiting alone for my cousin to come at Terminal 3. We were flying with AirAsia which is the only airline that uses the new terminal so it was nice to be there, experiencing a brand new building.


Anna came shortly after my arrival, along with her classmates Maartje and Andrea in Holland when she was an exchange student during high school years, and also with Marion, another Dutch girl who met with Maartje when they were in Gili Air, Lombok, just before they came to Jakarta last Monday.


We all departed by 6 a.m. and landed safely at Adisucipto Airport, Yogyakarta, before 7 a.m. We headed straightly to the hotel at Mayjend Sutoyo street, around the Keraton. I found both the hotel and transportation address from yogyes.com, which I found very useful to arrange this backpacking-style trip.

We reached Wisma Puspita by around 8 a.m. and after checked in and put our stuff in our family-sized room (which was really cheap when divided for 5 persons), we walked to the Keraton area. We met a kind man half way there who told us that the Keraton was still closed during the fasting month. It will be open by 12 p.m. so we went to a painting shop at Kemetiran Kidul.








At Novi Studio, we browsed and shopped for some batik painting on cotton. But I got a really nice one from silk with special price as I've bought two others. Maartje and Marion also shopped for some paintings and we were so happy because they sold them for fixed price while other shops are selling with multiple times price.








We walked along the Malioboro to the Sonobudoyo Museum and had a tour there. We also practiced to play a very simple gamelan music. A guy guided us thru the rooms and dropped us at Jl. Wijilan for gudeg lunch. We wanted to go to Yu Djum's (which was told as the most delicious of all) but it was full so we went to Ny. Rini's. It was not a nice one :(


We were kind of late to go to Balai Besar Kerajinan dan Batik at Jl. Kusumanegara, but luckily they were still welcoming us. So this little group of five started the batik course with Ibu Rida and Mbak Irfa, also with Bu Kartini the batik expert and some other helpful men till around 3 p.m.

We learned how to draw the pattern with pencil, to cover it with the boiled wax liquid by canting, dye it with the artificial color, and lock the color with some acid. We then simmer it on boiled water to remove the wax, then wash and rinse it, and voila, our very own batik cloths are ready to be dried!


It was not even 4 p.m. when we were done and we headed to Kotagede for silver handmade at Ansor's Silver. After a little shopping we went to House of Raminten, the place people been talking about, around Gereja Kota Baru. But we were a bit too early and we walked around the corner to find an internet cafe (it was Manna by Mirota Bakery) to kill time.

At around 7 p.m. we were back to House of Raminten and we got a spot in the corner of the place, someplace quite on the stage they called as lesehan. Then Nadya (little sister of Nalya, my elementary schoolmate and once best friend to my sister) and her boyfriend Cahyo joined us and we had some dinner, tho the meal didn't really amuse us.

During the in-town trips we met Pak Bambang from the Primkopad Taxi and we got his number so we could call him anytime we needed him. This is important, because there weren't so many taxis passing in the city, especially on the less traffic streets. It was around 11 p.m. when we finally back to the hotel and we were all tired and went to sleep immediately. A very tiring and sleepy day, and not-so-nice meals we had all day, but we were all glad for the day...