What a bad girl I am

A responsible world’s citizen ought to calculate her carbon footprint at least once in her life. I tried this WWF calculator since it’s colorful and does not pose question such as the volume of butane you use in a month :p

While the figure an average person living in the Europe is 12 tonnes/year, apparently my carbon footprint is 31.8 tonnes of CO2/year, and I think that only accounts for half of the air travel I normally do in a year. Oh well.

When I’m Thinking About You

I guess when you miss someone so bad, having a glimpse of that person in one of your dreams already feels like a dream comes true.

However most of us don’t have the ability to control what we see in our dreams when we sleep, and some even don’t dream at all.

Hmmpff, I guess when you miss someone really really really bad, you are already a lucky person if you could find time to daydream about that person.

What constitutes a good day?*

Let me tell you what a good day is not.

A good day is not when the alarm manages to wake you up however does not manage to get you out of bed.

A good day is not when the last edible thing available for breakfast is a single slice of dry bread while you know so well that your body needs at least two to get things going until lunch.

A good day is not when you have absolutely no idea what to wear which probably is not so bad after all had you had a walk in closet where everything is all lined up according to the colour category.
So again, a good day is not when you spend almost an hour rummaging through the huge piles of unironed laundry for the sake of finding that very shirt or that very cardigan.

A good day is not when you get out of your door, feeling proud of having pulled together this shirt-skirt-cardi-boots-scholar-look ensemble which would wrap you perfectly under the bright sun (which has been peeking through the window after hiding for so long), then you come to your senses. Zero degree Celsius is still gonna be zero degree Celsius regardless of the sun, thus putting a skirt is definitely a big no no unless you plan to knock the door of your Indonesian friend later to see if they have some stock of Antangin to spare.

A good day is not when you find your car covered in ice from head to toe. Not when you know that your wiper fluid container, normally filled with this magic ice breaker product, is empty. Not when you want to refill it you forget where the lever to open the hood is that you have no other option but to go over the manual.

Anyway… Do you let series of unfortunate events in the morning prevent you of having altogether a good day?

*another ‘curhat terselubung’ post

Bye Bye Garden

Ever wondered the state of the amateur garden I happily started up early this year? Tadaaaaa…. So much for having a pair of ‘tangan dingin’ when it comes to gardening, huh?

vingt-deux septembre

Four days ago, September 18th, marked one year of my stay in Pau. So if this is gonna be a 2 year assignlent, I really am in the middle of my journey. Hopefully the year ahead is full of fun.

My mum had her 54th birthday last month. Read this post on my dad’s blog. Loved it sooo much.

Had fun today during lunch time with www.yearbookyourself.com. Here’s what I came up with. What do you guys think?

Seputar Sistem Pencernaan

Selama saya tinggal di Pau ini, saya merasa kalau saya sering sekali mengalami gangguan pencernaan. Entah karena tidak cocok dengan makanan yang saya konsumsi di sini atau entah karena stress yang berlebihan.

Bosan dan malas pergi ke dokter, akhirnya saya sering main dokter-dokteran sendiri alias cari informasi swadaya lewat google. Namun kadang saya tidak tahu istilah-istilah formal dalam bahasa inggris untuk dijadikan key words.

Berikut kata-kata tersebut, siapa tahu ada yang memerlukannya di kemudian hari.

Flatulation = farting
Belching = burping
Borborygmi = stomach growl

Krucuk Krucuk

Kelaperan kelaperan… Would kill for a plate of nasi kuning komplit from Depot Miki or a bowl of chicken porridge from Lotus Pondok Indah.

Fit and Proper Test Bapak Sayang Anak

Entah kenapa, saya senang sekali bercerita tentang nenek kakek saya. Mungkin karena rindu. Kali ini ceritanya tentang Aki Ucup dan Enin Uu, orang tua dari Bapak saya. Oh ya, nama mereka sebenarnya Jusuf dan Suhanah.

Liburan terakhir, ketika jalan-jalan ke Jogja bersama Bapak Ibu saya, kami mampir ke rumah Nini Tintin, adik nenek saya, yg memang sejak menikah tinggal di Jogja.

Cerita kesana kemari, akhirnya sampai pada topik bagaimana awal kisah kasih antara Aki Ucup dan Enin Uu, sebelum akhirnya mereka menikah dan punya 11 anak. Ya, sebelas anak, waktu itu program KB belum dicanangkan.

Enin Uu lahir dan tumbuh dewasa di kota Bandung, dari keluarga besar yang bekerja di Pasar Baru. Nenek moyang saya memang ‘orang pasar’, jadi jangan heran kalau banyak anggota keluarga saya yang berjiwa dagang tinggi. Aki Ucup, yang dilahirkan di Gorontalo, Sulawesi Utara, pergi merantau seorang diri ke Pulau Jawa, dan entah kenapa akhirnya memilih kota Bandung.

Waters of March

Today is the last day of my three week holiday in Jakarta before I head back to Pau tomorrow morning.

Had a great time last night watching Brazilian Jazz (not Brazilian people hehe). Too bad they did not perform my favorite Jobim’s piece… So here it is..

Waters of March
(Antonio Carlos Jobim)

A stick a stone it’s the end of the road, it’s the rest of the stump, it’s a little alone
it’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sun, it is night ,it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a gun.

the oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush, the knot in the wood, the song of the thrush.
the wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall, a scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all.

it’s the wind blowing free. it’s the end of a slope. it’s a beam, it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.

and the riverbank talks of the water of march. it’s the end of the strain, it’s the joy in your heart.

Me Fall in Love in Rome

Even though they say that ‘Travel Islam’ is a la mode these days, I try to balance things out by squeezing a short trip to Rome in between trips to Morocco and Andalusia. We had a five-day weekend here in France in the middle of May. Being a first timer to Rome, I pushed away the idea of exploring the off beaten tracks and sticked to the must sees standard touristy places as recommended by the infamous Lonely Planet.

I was very much in the mood of art when I was there, so here’s some of the interesting things I discovered during my visits to the Musei Vatican and the Museo Borghese (Should have known these things had I read more books in my free time :p):