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New Year's eve booze preparation. This year, my friends and I are having a year end celebration at my house. We will have party with close friends (only the best people)..., some booze, some snacks, and fire works. With best crowd, I'm only expecting awesomeness :)

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I don't think I have a full focus on this project during this change of year weekend. And therefore, in order just for the sake of the project, I took pic of my reading list at the moment. It's not great really, but I think this shows a little bit of my current interests. The first one would be a Chinese poem book with lots of colour pics, by Jimmy Liao- this is to remind me to keep learning Zhongwen. Nagabumi is an Indonesian book- probably this is the first Indo book that I read after 10 year if not more. Rafa refers to Rafael Nadal- yeah.. am a fan.. hahaha. The Beijing Concensus is the book that telling about the economic phenomena in China. Kurzmeyer-- is a book of painting by Max Von Moss.

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Where the hell is everyone? It's the week in between Christmas and NY.. and even though there's no holiday at all at my office.. somehow, the holiday mood is super strong.

Introducing INGE

Inge is my best friend. We knew each other through a friend of ours, Merlin. At the beginning, we started hanging out as church buddies. Both of us doesn't really have regular company for Sunday morning mass.

After church time, we normally spending time eating out, enjoying high tea, and meandering the city. Since Inge has lived in Shanghai for longer time than I do, she knows more about the off beaten path too (well.., actually, she's naturally know that kind of stuff). Inge is a really FUN person to hang out with. I can talk to her about anything... and by anything.. it really means ANYTHING. From the smartest things to the dumbest and even weirdest stuffs. So.. YES, we really enjoy each others company.

Before I met her, I actually heard a lot about her sportiness (aka awesomeness). She's adventurous kind of girl and really really love to do outdoor activities. And therefore, she's the one who directly/ indirectly push me to do more daring stuffs. It began with running for breast cancer research, for which I never done before. And that was just the beginning of our adventures. To cut it short, she's basically help me to conquer my own fear and to become a happier person.

For all those reasons (plus many more), I really cherish her as my best best friend and I miss her dearly... (am truly hoping that Jordan trip will happen, hence we can rock Jordan together)

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This is what I found early in the morning on my way to the office. No one seems to notice this poor bird. Well, maybe it's just me that easily amazed with this small thing lying on the ground. :) And in my thought, this is something unusual picture of the day. And heyyy.., that reminds me of a project that I've been intended to do. Project 365. Maybe this is a sign. :)

I found this picture on the National Geographic webpage and i couldn't stop wonder of how surreal this picture. The color reflected on the photo doesn't seem real, it looks more like a painting to me.


The photo shows a desert scenery in Namibia. This coming January, my bestfriend will go to Tanzania in order to scale Kilimanjaro. I envy them. To scale Kilimanjaro would be a super awesome experience. Owell.. I have my own reason of not going ... and if I got lucky, I might have the chance to go there too :)

Apart from desert in Africa, my bestfriend and I plan to visit a different desert. We plan to explore Wadi Rum in Jordan in April. And guess what, I can't wait for it to happen. The feeling to see a million stars on the sky at night would be amazing. I once experienced that during the trip to Inner Mongolia. Unfortunately, at that time, the weather was too cold that we could not stay for too long in the outdoor. For Wadi Rum, I definitely will spend sometime to just staring at the sky :)

Early Christmas Dine-IN

This year I celebrated super early yet awesome Christmas dinner with my 2 best buddies, Inge and Lydia. At the beginning we only planned to have a dine-in at Lydia's apartment. But once we enter the apartment, we saw her Christmas tree stood there beautifully. Then to top it up, Lydia played bunch of Christmas songs... and suddenly we were thinking of having a proper Christmas dinner. It is also because Inge is only in Jakarta for the weekend and we won't be able to celebrate the special day with her. 


We deliberately had this crazy idea to look for a random present in 1 hour. Lucky that Lydia's apartment is located on top of the shopping mall. With budget just around 100k rupiah, it was extremely difficult to find a nice present. At the end, of course it was just for FUN and awesomeness.


The dinner itself was super nice. From the preparation to the food to the wine to the people.., everything is just perfect. It was a lovely early Christmas dinner. Happy Christmas my best buddies.. :)

Battersea Power Station

 
What I can see here is the great piece of architecture.  The size of the (previously) power station is huge.  It almost dwarfed everyone surrounds it.  In recent years, government tries to dismantle this piece and turn into a large superblock development.  Many architects were invited to re-design and incorporate the element of the old building.

It is definitely a masterpiece of architecture; not only because of the size, but also all the element of industrial character.  I visited Battersea with my fellow classmates from the AA (back then I was still a student).  We were amazed by the proportion of the ground, the building, and the human activities.  

Orphanage Visit

On Oct 2nd, I went to the orphanage for disable kids at Pamulang, called Bhakti Luhur. The event was conjunction with my birthday and I was thinking to do something different and meaningful. Turns up, it was really worthy to go there. It really gave a happy feeling for a very long time. The kids are all angels.

We sang together and played games together. Amazingly, the kids are very brave and proactive towards most of the activities. Some even showed off with their move on “Poco-Poco” dance. After all the activities, we invited them to sing a happy birthday and blew the candle together. At the end, we ate together with the kids. It was super fun.

Of course the FUN won’t be complete without all my friends’ support. I just felt so blessed to have such a kind hearted and lovely friends. I will never be able to thank them enough. So…, Mareen, Sasa, Helena, Earlene, Sigit, Vince, Mamat, Meiliana, Zena, Merlin, Mely, Melyta, Novi, Yansen, Mulyadi, Fanny, Yahya, Amelia thank you.. thank you… thank you. I really appreciate and grateful of all the helps and time that you guys spared. And of course not to forget my parents, for all their support, esp. my mom. Without her, this event will never occur.

Re-blogging again !!!

It’s been a while since the last time I blogged (which happened in 2008). Wow, that was almost 4 years ago. Back then I was still live in the UK, exploring independent life and far from home. There are lots of things happened since then. I left UK in February 2009 to explore Shanghai of China. There are plenty of opportunities in China compare to Europe within that time. The economic crisis hit the Europe quite badly. Lucky enough, the government of China decides to spend the budget on infrastructure and building new cities. As you might noticed already, I am working in the build environment industry. Therefore, this Chinese government policy is very beneficial for me.

After I spent 2.5 years in China, I decided to return to my hometown, Jakarta. That happened on 3th July 2011. I’m now working in the developer company, one of the largest in Indonesia. Of course this brings lots of excitement, especially with the high profile project.

Ok, enough for the short introduction. The main reason I’m re-blogging is because I heard this news about the Japanese tourism board will give out 10,000 free tickets to Japan for free. The idea is to spread the word about how safe and wonderful Japan is. I think that is a very smart way to do things. Just for information, Japan has been hit by tsunami and nuclear plant incident, which caused radiation panic. Since then, Japanese tourism has been suffered quite badly. And it is time to return Japanese tourism industry as a safe place to visit.

Radiation? Yes.. but radiation happens everywhere.

Faces of Vietnam

Buzzing Hanoi

I went to Hanoi on August 2011. At the airport we were picked up our friend, Ronald. He immediately showed us the best of Vietnam. The first thing we noticed is the exciting feeling about Hanoi. It's green with paddy field on one side, and tall development on the other side. Not only that, we also came across with people carrying kettle in front of the new city development.

The architecture in Hanoi is really amazing too. The city is filled with tall narrow buildings. This is mostly because of the price of land that is rocket high. We can find a mix between colonial style architecture and Khmer architecture.

 The great and at the same time annoying thing about Hanoi is the conjunction between vehicular, motorbike and pedestrian traffic. We continuously had to encounter this excitement. It was scary at the same time. We just couldn't lost guard on where to walk and to cross the street. It was definitely an awesome experience.