So I sense some of you nice readers want some update. ;) (Hey, Pizza Guy, do you know that your colleagues here are the most dangerous automobile drivers, second only to those bacchanalians driving home from Northgate at 2 AM Friday?). You guys, I don't really have stuff to ramble on, last weekend was indeed a very normal one. But, I'll try anyway, without being too prolix, of course. :)

Since I've been spending weekends ping-pong-ing between here & Houston this past 5 weeks, there had been less time for some quality laundry. So, there I did it, all four loads of them. It's now neatly folded and stacked according to the color and functionality.

What else, all Saturday and Sunday, I was a glorified couch potato, with a total control of the remote on the one hand and a good book on the other. Whenever I got tired of the TV, I moved to the reading, and vice versa. When I got tired of both, I resorted to cooking.

Yes, yes, I was succeeded on making the Martabak Telor. The keys for the egg inside to be fully cooked are to make the whole thing wide enough and to use medium heat. I also made some Tahu Isi with meat, vegetables and pecel dressing fillings.

I'm sad to announce that, QFALB gym trip had been put on hold last week. I should hit the gym again today, since there will be another wedding party this Saturday. I have to look sensational on that blue summer dress. At this point, I'm not gonna hold you in contempt for LOL or throw up at that last remark I made. *big grin*

Have a good week, guys!

This town, specially the Northgate area where I live in, surely comes to live for the weekend on Thursdays night. For the R-OH & musically inclined, we have a country bar (2-step, anyone?), 2 saloons, and at least 3 beer places in the area. But that's not the point of this entry. :)

So, I was walking home yesterday night and happened to 2nd hand smoking to a guy who walked a couple feet in front. It smelled like a clove cigarette and right that instant I miss my father so much, I could die. My father who could easily blend in with the Minangese, the Javanese, and the Batak people, cause he speaks all three languages fluently.

One time, I was passing by some place (or is it an open sewer) somewhere here, and it felt as if I was walking right in the middle of the traditional market. The ones with the chicken, the meats, the vegetables & fruit stalls, the broken roads and the crowds.

So, that's true what that article on Time magazine said. Often, our olfactory (and tactile) sensors invoke deeper emotional feelings compared to the visual and auditory ones. They said, that's because the information from the first two are transported directly to the amigdala, the main hub of emotional part of our brain, while the later two, while enroute to the amigdala, need to take a transit at the thalamus, which is the last pit stop before the information are then processed by the cortex. Phew, *taking a deep breath*, that was a long sentence.

As usual: wanna share your olfactory moment? :)

Oh, and it was Wednesday

already, and I haven't had a gut to ask him that question. Calm down, now, g a l s. I haven't called the guy, yet, maybe this weekend ;). That him is thy Advisor, who by the way, really arts in heaven, heaven as in, the-day-I-finish-my-defense heaven. I wish I could tell you guys the story, or rather the history, behind this whole mess. Suffice it to say that I have been tricked to stay here longer than what I had expected. No problemo, I will get my way around.

Changing subject, after 6 weeks and several days, my colleagues and I finally were one step ahead on the quest to fix the reactor. Sorry, Ranger, for once here I need to bring out the crappola stuff back on to the blog. So, we nailed down that high pressure leak, what's left is minute air leak somewhere in the gas line. So, as long as we are able to critically examine all the lines, it should be fixed soon enough and I can get back to my unremarkable work days again.

Now, it's memorable stuff time. Yesterday in history: in the year I was born, Muhammad Ali declared that his 3rd retirement is final. In 1974 and 1975, respectively, Liz Taylor divorced her fifth husband, Richard Burton, for the first time and Cher divorced Bono.

Have a good week & weekend, guys!

Since it was almost 12PM when we finally reached Houston, we decided to have a lunch first before spending a good 3-4 hours in the museum. The choices were: eating in at MoNS's McD or stopping by at a nearby sandwich place -- the green shirt lady said that it's a very nice place to eat in. Fortunately, all were in favor of the sandwich place.

It's called, The Hobbit Cafe, opened for business 31 years ago. Yeah, Hobbit as in the Lord of the Rings' Hobbits. The cafe is housed in a Tudor styled house surrounded by big Oaks trees and is kind of secluded from the busy Richmond Ave. In the spring time, it must be nice to sit out in the patio and deck seatings. As for the inside, the low ceilings, the branch door handle, the driftwood chair with fur seat, the terra cotta painted walls, and the illustrated pictures of the Hobbits, all bring out the whimsical feeling of Tolkien's universe.

The selection of food caters both vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike. Where else could you find a thick sandwich with tabouli, avocado, alfalfa sprout and a buffalo burger served at the same place? This place is definitely on my next Houston dine-out list.

We arrived at the museum, stood in the very long line for the ticket, and hurried inside. The museum will be closed in less than 4 hours. We had to set aside some time in the end of the visit, since we also bought the ticket for the 30 minutes presentation at the planetarium.

The recent discovery of St. Peter's tomb was the first to greet us to the exhibit. It was then followed by the historical artifacts of both famous and infamous Popes along the 2000 years span. The most interesting art in the exhibit was the thanka, a Dalai Lama personally handcrafted gift to John Paul II. Among other interesting stuff that I learnt were the insults Napoleon made to Pius VII by presenting him a one size too small inauguration tiara. Adding to the insult, the tiara was embelished with looted gems from the Vatican. And also, Michaelangelo's replied to Julius II's "When will it be finished?", "When I can."

Anyway, the church documents displayed were way beyond my self-taught first year Latin ;). It was still fun, though, to guess what they meant before peeking at the translation. :D

We arrived back at CS before the sun retired from the clear summer sky. By that good-bye moment, everyone was becoming more like each other's close friend.

And now, I'm trying to focus myself once again to that writing. Wish me luck, guys.

Adding to the record, yesterday was the 5th times I went to Houston in the last 37 days. I signed up for a group visit to Vatican exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science. The group was supposed to be consisted of graduate students and young professionals. At the last minute, literally, half of the signees did not show up and, interestingly, people just started popping up requesting to fill in the empty seats. So, instead of the "homogenous" age group, we had a variety from 9 y.o. to 60 something.

The list of passenger went like this:
-An overbearing lady in a green cotton shirt, the first driver of the van.
-A guy in thick glasses who is a Chemistry Phd student, the second driver of the van.
-A humble lady in her 40's, who personally knows a lot of my dept's old professors.
-Her equally humble stroke-striken mother.
-A guy with a heart muscles problem, who was pretty knowledgeable about, well, pretty much everything.
-A lady with a big black bag, who was trying to be politically correct all the time.
-Her darling Peanuts addict daughter.
-A lady in the late 20's, who despite of having a foreign accent, refused to answer the question of where she originally comes from.
-And then there was I, the observer, the bearer of fact.

With that last minute changes, we were 40 minutes behind schedule before everybody was finally buckled up in the cargo-modified 15-passenger white van. Extra careful driving is a must, for the fact that the van has a much higher center of gravity, which is categorized as a roll on prone vehicle.

The first 15 minutes of the trip was filled with awkward conversations. I was then trying to fall a sleep while the lady with the big black bag was invading my personal space with her bag-digging activity. But then, things got better and better with all the jokes and all the stories.

-to be continued...

What is it with me and Friday? "Interesting" things always occur on Freya's day. For starter, on my way from Kinko's, I saw a yellow Beetle with an arrangement of artificial sun-flowers right beside its steering wheel. Talking about color coordination :). Another thing, on the short trip to Bryan Independent School District's office, I saw a wonderful display of art works from KG-5th grade students, from paintings to clay pottery. Amazing.

So, I & G, the Panamian, also had a nice morning window shopping at Earth Art, a craft store in downtown Bryan. The store sells stuff from various countries, mostly Greece, Russian, India, China, Poland, and of course, Indonesia. Yeah, I had never expected to find exotic things, such as Bali carved arts and wayang, Batik clothings, and kites, up for sale in the middle of nowhere like here in B/CS. Oh...also, there is this beautiful wooden chess table in the store. All of the chess pieces were modeled after Mahabharatha characters. Both the table and the chess piece were elaborately carved, carefully finished, all for a shy $1,200. Cool stuff.

Anyway, here is a little conversation between me and the salesman:
Him: You're from Indonesia?
Me: Yeah..
Him: From which part of the country?
Me: Sumatra..
Him: *Looks joyously at me* Anywhere near Pekanbaru?
Me: Actually, I'm from there.
Him: *Frantically happy* Rumbai area?
Me: *Hyper* Oh my god, I live there... Do you live in the area?
Him:We don't actually live in the compound. My parents still live there, dad works at Schlumberger. I went to boarding school in Malaysia. Can I give you my number so we can hang out sometimes. :D
Me: Sure, do you have e-mail also? :)
Him: I'm J, nice to meet you. (*Shaking hand*)
Me: X, nice meeting you too.

The interesting thing was, that he pulled his hand towards his chest after the shaking, much like the traditional Indonesian way.
So, the question is, should I call him sometime? Me and my anti-social disorder need some serious treatment. ;)

Judge Advocate General

Navy Commander Harmon Rabb, Jr. became a top Naval Fighter pilot like his father. However, one night he crashed while trying to land his F-14 Tomcat onto the pitching carrier deck. At the time, he was diagnosed with night blindness and removed from flight duty.

Not wanting to leave the Navy, Harm transferred to the Navy's "JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL" Corps, which prosecutes & defends the law of the sea.

Along with his fellow JAG lawyer, Marine Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie, Harm now fights in & out of the courtroom with the same daring & determination that made him a Top Gun in the air.


I love you, Harm!!

Top 5 signs that this blogger was on a bored beyond belief stage

5. Trying to sing in harmony with Nelly Furtado's Unlike a Bird. Still a total failure, somebody, enlighten me please. {Moving on to the next entertainment media...}

4. Reading compilation of Kafka's story. Sunken to extreme boredom in 5 minutes, which is unusual ;). {Moving on to the next entertainment media...}

3. Watching Comedy Central's Premium Blend. Found that all jokes were dull and unfunny. {Moving on to the next entertainment media...}

2. Falling a sleep at 9 PM.

1. Start composing this list on that 12 hours slumber.

I drove back to CS in the wee hours of the morning the other day. Along TX 105, there are the usual ranches and trees and open spaces. It was a full moon and the sky was embelished with a long line of thick black cloud. As the highway is stretched East to West, the moon was exactly on my left side. I looked at the moon and said, Hey moon, accompany me in this long road, please. Btw, I was lucky. Can you imagine if there was a full-grown Texas size werewolf suddenly crossing the road...

Anyhow, more stuff about the moon. The good guys at Southwest Texas State University solved the art-history puzzle of the exact time of the scenery depicted on Van Gogh's Moonrise. It was 9:08 PM, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France time. For a century, everyone thought, that the painting was of the setting sun. Cool, huh?



Wanna share your full moon moment?

Farewell to a Blog Friend

That happened a day or two ago; but the latest is that she has disappeared, just at a time when she was supposed to sing. It is not only her supporters who are looking for her, many are devoting themselves to the search, but all in vain; Josephine has vanished, she will not sing; she will not even be cajoled into singing, this time she has deserted us entirely.

--"Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", F. Kafka.

Now, to make it more appropriate, change all the SHEs and HERs and Josephine into HEs, HISes and Ano.

Ave atque vale, No!

QFALB, Weekend Edition

Huahuaha...this weekend was a total disaster for my QFALB.

On Friday, I surrendered to this full-of-carbs Half Fish Tacos at Rockfish. Instead of hitting the gym, I took a 3 hours nap. Oh, btw, around that nap time, a thunderstorm was evolving around 2 miles from the campus. What is it with me and hails & thunderstorms? I've always been on a REM stage everytime some potential natural disasters at such scale were in the area.

On Saturday, a 1/2 group of friends and I went to Houston for a day of fun. That was my 4th trip in the last 30 days, what a record. At first, we visited the Museum of Fine Arts. The main spotlight of the museum that day was Paris, in the age of impresionism. So, I finally was able to take a closer look on the terms: impressionism, neo and post impresionism, art noveau, odalisque. ;)

We joined the other half group of friends for lunch at a buffet sushi place. I had never seen so many variety of sushi before, nyam-nyam, excited. With only 30 minutes to the closing time, I managed to devour 15 pcs of sushi, lotsa of tempura, noodle soup, deserts, and fruits.

A Houston trip wouldn't be complete without grocery shopping at the China Town and the bubble tea. Yup, another failure of self control, I got the usual champagne milk green slushie. Mrs. B, then, invited us to her place and to a nice desert at a French bakery. And we updated her on the "situation" since she left CS a year ago. We drove back home around 1:30 Sunday morning, but not before she prepared a home-made midnight meal for the six of us. Nice.

So, you know, all eat and no exercise equal total disaster. I should hit the gym again tonight. Wish me luck, guys.

O tempora! O mores!

The Quest for a Leaner Bod, Day 1

Today, I had a pear and 2 slices of bread for lunch and an Indomie for dinner. Yeah, it could have been a healthier dinner, but I was too lazy to prepare something else. As I hit the road for the Rec Center (Rec, for short), there was a thick black cloud covering the area. The sun was already set, leaving a slightly blue sky. I turned off the radio, enjoying the peaceful moment. Looking at the Rec, I realized, the last time I visited the building was last December. The thing is, it wasn't even for some exercise, but was a part of my parents' campus tour.

Tonight's trip was kinda a baby step of my exercise program. I decided to just stay there for 1 hour, dividing it into 15-minute sessions. At first, I took on a cross country run on the treadmill, followed by calory burning mode on the stationary bike. I then went to the one of the stair cardio for the next session.

About 5 minutes into the stair exercise, I felt like I was about to collapse. So, I stopped. I took a small rest on a stationary bike, and then went outside the gym towards the Racquet ball courts. There are nice sofas in front of each court, I was planning to sit there for a while. It was almost a total darkness during my walk towards the sofas. I dunno how I was able to reach them unfallen.

I closed my eyes, I heard some beeping sound in the distance. Nobody did anything to stop it, so I assumed it was only in my head. Great!, I thought. Not only do I have problem with my endurance but also I suffer some mild halucination. Now that I think about it, the body black out was related to my body trying to digest the dinner I had during the last hour. And the ringing voice, it was my watch loosing battery power. It's about time for another Walmart trip to get a $10 digital wrist watch. :)

Quod me nutrit me destruit.

Yesterday, G invited me to come for a pool side birthday party at her house. The birthday girl is a student at this Bryan school where G worked as a mentor. Being there, I felt like creating a scene from Real Women Have Curves, just for being surrounded by a group of Latinas and their children.

The kids were having a lot of fun, right there in the water, with the hot summer Texas sun shining. It was a good day. That brought back sweet childhood memories. I, too, used to have midday swimmings back in the elementary school days. Usually, it was in the caturwulan or long school breaks. So, a group of 7-10 of us went together around 10 in the morning, spent like 4-5 hours in the pool. Rarely did we do the actual lap, most of the time we created our own games or went diving in the 10-ft section. By the time we got out of the pool, everybody already acquired a much darker skin tone, unhealthy-looking reddish hair, and definitely was very-very hungry. We then ordered the famous Club burger or egg-sandwich, french fries, and ice cream in the upstairs cafetaria. [Remember the good ol' days, Yas?]

For 18 years, I used to live in that wonderful place called Rumbai. It's approximately 7 km from Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau. You could see some of Rumbai sceneries from the gallery on the bottom right.

Rumbai camp, as the company christened it, is a living haven. The houses inside the camp have free electricity, water, and cable. We have our own security people, free shuttle bus service to Pekanbaru and very cheap internal taxy service. Some lucky houses even have their own jungle in the backyard. There is a mosque, a Catholic church, a HKBP church and a GPIB church inside the camp area. In short, everything is clean, systematic and green in Rumbai.

Rumbai, like the other 3 Caltex districs, has her own hospital, private school from KG to highschool, commissary, amazing recreational facilities such as bowling, squash, golf course, swimming pool, tennis, fitness center, b-ball courts, a library, and a movie theather. There are also the artistic extracuricullar activities such as Bina Musika for the musically inclined and Kartika Mandra to learn all of the different traditional dances, I've heard that they even have gamelan practice there too. Pencak Silat, Tae Kwondo, and Karate are the major martial arts type we have available. All of this facilities are either for free or for almost at no cost.

It's alway nice to talk about Rumbai. I believe every Rumbai kid has the same strong tie with the place. In most cases, it's the place one always wants to call home, even though one's family has to move outside the area once the parent(s) retired.

Stay tuned for other Rumbai episodes. :D
Ave atque vale.

Of (Wo)man and food

My brother and I were very proud of what we bought for this week's grocery. Instead of the usual high-in-saturated-fat-and-sodium stuff, we picked different kind of fruits: apples, pears, mangos, and bananas for snack. We even got fresh ingredients for salad making; still opt for the "high fat" dressing, though.

I've been trying to follow Dr. Atkins' suggestion by consuming more protein than carbs. Also, other than the occasional social "drink", I have managed to stay away from those liquid candies for almost 2 years now. So, now, what I need to get back that much leaner body is to initiate some sporting activities. Rec center, here I come.

Finally, got some will to stop this madness. :-)

Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur


You know, I perused over my archive and realized that the blog is primarily revolved around movies & tv, uninteresting school life, and that longing for sincere amare. Really need to put a bit more spice into my blogging life. Any suggestion, guys?

Do you? I do.

On Saturday, I attended went to a complete Moslem wedding[, first time ever attending such occasion], so I was really-really looking forward to it. I had never managed to be on the Ijab Kabul part before, but was always on time to be on the reception part of each wedding, yum..yum. Thanks to B who detoured all the way back to CS so that we could car pool together to Houston where the wedding took place, I even drove the car on the way back. Man, I miss driving manual, the power, the speed.

OK, back to the wedding part. The place where the wedding took place is called the Islamic Da'wah Center and is located on 202 Main and Franklin. It is a beautiful minor remodelling of an old bank and has its own parking. Hakeem Ulajuwon is the benefactor of the mosque. The downstair reception area still has the original safe deposits area which is turned into a library. It has a big circular time lock door, just like the ones we see in movies. The 2-floor mosque was big and has beautiful wooden carvings on the ceiling and nice curtains on surrounding windows which make it a very comfy place of worship.

So, there we were, 5 Indonesian Aggies among the other female guests, ringless (except for the Aggie ring), with unknown prospect of marriages--well not really, remember I'm a drama queen. Luckily, I had Inok on my side, explaining the step-by-step of the ceremony, otherwise I would have missed the exact moment the bride and groom became officially a wife and a husband. Congratulations Cici and Radit! The delicious Middle Eastern delicacy served included Pita bread, rice, beef, salad w/ feta cheese, some kind of yogurt and for deserts we had Baklava and fruits.

On a totally different subject, yesterday, I found out that my biggest highshool crush, the one who was planning to become a celibate priest, has a girlfriend now. *Sniff sniff sob sob*
Alius patheticus amare fabula de Xinda

??

Aarrgghh...I forgot, they're shutting down water at 10 this morning to repair some leakage. Woke up couple minutes too late.

Thor's day

Yesterday, I had to go out venturing Bryan & College Station, B/CS for short, for research related stuff. I thought after living almost 6 years here I would have known everything about the city and the university. Since most of my school activities were perfomed in the Main campus, I've only heard stuff about the Riverside campus but had never have a chance to visit the place. Riverside is a pretty big campus and is mainly a place to conduct research for the State of Texas research foundations such as TEES and TTI. Interestingly, the area was used a military air-base back in the '50s.

These days, it seems that everyone is hooked on the internet. It's interesting to get a peek on the websites people visited while still at the working hour. This tough- looking guy, in the one of the local mechanical shop I visited yesterday, was browsing a Long and Short Gun website. While this feminine-looking guy in the Riverside Campus, whom I asked for direction, was browsing the Pier 1 Imports site. My insurance agent was busy checking his hotmail the other day when I cancelled one of the policies. As for my self, 90% chance is that I'm doing the blog hopping. New hobby this past couple months. ;)
What about you?

Anyway, may Thor go easy on all of us on this lovely Thursday.

If you could change history, what would you change?

OMG, I don't even know where to start. There were a lot of things happened yesterday. Let me just tell you what I went through last night, it needs a whole other blog moment to cover the technicalities of the earlier hours, plus I have made it a promise to minimize post about that particular stuff--the micro poly crappola thing, as Mr. SP properly put it.

Well, maybe let's just start with Monday evening. I finally was able to go see Finding Nemo. Agree with d, the graphic was totally cool. There were couple of times when I couldn't differentiate if it was a real scenery or a computer generated one. The story was kinda good too. It was of course not a wishy-washy-romance-where-is-my-prince/princess kinda genre. It was about Marlin the clown fish's journey to find Nemo his lost son. Quite an adventurous one too. So the joke were not original, they pulled up stuff from the usual American cliches including the '70s totally, dude! lingo. What could we expect, main targeted audience were kids with varying ages. Shrek is still the best one for the slightly mature audiences. ;)

Back at home, I decided that I still didn't have enough entertainment for the day. So, I proceeded to watch The Pianist. Man...it really makes me want to learn all this stuff about hatred specifically about the Anti-Semitism. What is it with our supposedly humane society to go treating people as if they are all wild boars in the jungle? B mentioned this one word, pogrom [Merriam- Webster: an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically : such a massacre of Jews.]

I fell asleep as soon as the movie ended. It did drench all the energy I had left for the day. I woke up fresh 10 hours later. Went to school early, checked blog and e-mails. And I got one e-mail from G. Haven't heard from her for at least 1 month.

She invited me to come together watching the 2003 Miss Universe pageant. Yeah, I know, it's kinda degrading for us women to "support" this beauty contest thing. But I couldn't deny, it's some form of entertainment. Yes, there are million reasons why they keep these beauty contests year after year. It is business: cosmetics, tourism, stuff. You know why the winners are always from Latin America or India and lately other Asian countries? Because these countries are the biggest market for beauty products.

Anyhow, G did not really care about the 71 contestants competing. She was more interested in showing me the beautiful Panama. This year's pageant was held in Panama City, in conjuction with their 100 years celebration free from Spain colonialization. Panama is indeed beautiful. The beaches and the interior part are amazing. G has an opinion, that actually Panamanian government has to pay more attention to this nature tourism instead of totally focusing on the businesses that come out of the Panama Canal.

So, in the end, Miss Dominican Republic holds the title. Although I think, it should have been Miss South Africa. She has nice posture and behavior, she is attractive and beautiful, and she looks mature, and importantly, she gave the most logical answer in the final interview.

Btw, I tried this new munchies from Panama last night. It's called Hojaldres. The dough was made out of flour mix, milk, and salt. It was then turned into thin slices and then deep fried. We put some salsa to eat it with. Yummy!

Kermit and JJ Bowen

I stumbled to this muppet movie short-titled Kermit's Swamp Years. It was about the adventure of 12 years old Kermit and the gank travelling beyond the boundary of their safe nest. Their task was to save fellow swamp creatures from becoming the dissection objects of a 9th grade biology class.

That reminded me of a few years back in Junior High biology class. For the sake of observing the difference in the digestive and transportation system of the different families of animals, the groups of 5-6 students had to bring either a live chicken, rabbit, or frog. Adding to the shocking experience was that we had to self-dissect the poor creatures.

So, naturally, I refused to join the fun and stayed outside for the whole class period. That day was the first time I cried in public, the second time was...well, let's not go there.

I have a soft-spot for animals. One time, I couldn't eat meat for weeks, knowing that the cooked savor on the table was Mimi, the hen. But as I grew older, the Machiavellian side of me is getting stronger. Now, I pretty much could devour the cooked "normal" meat, even after I see their alive version.

Anyhow, I just got back from visiting a dear friend who just gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Let's welcome Jacob Johannes Bowen to the world.

*Biological clock is ticking, tick..tick..tick..*