Proposal: Travelling Plan

A friend of mine texted me: “I’ve got a proposal for you. Will you agree?” I was puzzled. Which proposal was he talking about? A moment later, he called.

He proposed to open a joint saving for our group for travelling purposes. Interesting idea…. FYI, my friends and I had planned to travel together a few times but there were always financial problem. So to eliminate the financial factor, this joint saving might be right thing to do.

After a long talk,  we decided to save around Rp 200.000,- or roughly around US$20 each month for two to three years.  In 2 years, we’d have around 5 millions rupiahs or US$480. Not much but I think it should be enough for a return air ticket from Singapore to Thailand or China and a few-day stay in a cheap hotel. Well, we wouldn’t be able to go to Japan like we’d planned a few years ago but at least we’d be travelling together. That’s the most important thing.

Can’t wait for the sort-of-well-planned travelling!!!

time flies fast and without knowing it, tomorrow is THE day

BALI BALI BALI

Hello!!!! I finally have the chance to update my blog. It’s been weeks since the last time I blogged properly. I’ve been too tired to blog as I’ve been touring around Bali with my friends. It’s quite funny to admit but I think that trip is my first trip around Bali that I can remember. The last time I tour around Bali is when I was a little boy. Although I live in Bali for 20 years, I rarely tour around. Perhaps I’ve never had the right company. Quite pathetic, eh? I live in one of the most amazing islands and yet, I rarely go out to explore it.

Anyway, last week, my friends came over to Bali and I had a promised to fulfil to guide them around Bali. Well, I wasn’t a good “tour guide” as my knowledge of places of interests was quite limited. Lucky us, the driver was experienced in bringing tourists to places I’d heard of but vaguely recalled being there. The trip was fun and enriching (at least for me).

Day 1

Day 1 wasn’t that interesting for me. I thought the guys had to be tired after a 1.5-hour flight and a relaxed day 1 would be appropriate, so we mainly roamed around Kuta. We took a stroll the beach until we reached Discovery Shopping Mall a.k.a. Centro, a seaside Mall. I left the group at night and they continued roaming around Kuta in search of “buda” or “bule muda”.

Day 2

I wanted to bring them to Ubud, Kintamani and Tanah Lot but the plan was changed last minute. After they had “Babi Guling” for lunch at “Handayani”, we headed to Ubud. We made a few stops to visit a silver jewellery factory and Sukawati Art Market. Ubud’s well-known for its wood carvings and scenery but my friends were asleep during the ride and didn’t really want to visit an art market anymore so I had no choice but to direct them to Monkey Forest. The monkeys were so cute especially the baby monkeys. There was monkey trying to open a bottle of mineral water! What a priceless sight! I wanted to  bring them to Kintamani afterwards but somehow we changed direction to Uluwatu, another place that filled with monkeys. We didn’t watch the “Kecak Dance” as the tickets were quite expensive and we had to catch sunset at Jimbaran. However, we were unable to catch the sunset at Jimbaran as we were too busy taking photos at Uluwatu. But seeing a sunset in Uluwatu wasn’t that bad either. The view was STUNNING! Oh, words of warning: the monkeys in Uluwatu are cunning and aggressive, they tend to steal small items such as sunglasses. The monkeys snatched my friend’s sunglasses. We had sumptuous dinner at Menega Cafe, Jimbaran. I loved the barbequed clams and prawns! The price was quite affordable, 35k rupiahs for 1 kg of clams!

Day 3

I didn’t go out with them as I had some university matter to do. They went to Bedugul, Pura Ulun Danu at Beratan Lake and Tanah Lot to see sunset.

Day 4

RAFTING DAY!!! We went for rafting at Ayung River. It was a 2.5-hour ride. We were exhausted at the end but it was worth it!

Day 5

We were supposed to go parasailing at Benoa that day but we were told that the water level wasn’t high enough and it might not be safe to go parasailing. We were disappointed but then decided to go DIVING!!! Although it meant we had to spend more, it was worth it! At first, it was quite difficult to breath ONLY through our mouths but after a while we got used to it.  The underwater view was AMAZING!! The fish, coral, starfish and other sea creatures were beautiful!! I’d like to dive again. :) Afterwards, we went to Nusa Dua just to see the beach and took some sand. The journey continued to Joger, a t-shirts shop. The t-shirts were not ordinary t-shirts, they got funny words on it but in Indonesian. The shop was DAMN FREAKIN HEAVILY CROWDED!! There were few tour groups that scheduled to visit that shop at the time we arrived there. We even had to wait for about half an hour just to pay the items we picked.

Day 6

It was their last day in Bali. We went to Taman Ayun, Kintamani and Tampak Siring. We had the famous crispy ducks for lunch. At Kintamani, we were swarmed by those souvenir sellers and tattoo artists. It took us about 15 mins to shoo them away. On the way to Tampak Siring, we stopped at a coffee plantation as the driver suggested. It turned out that they planted cocoa and other plants too. We were warmly welcomed and the plantation people let us try their products; chocolate, coffee-chocolate, black coffee, ginger drink, and lemon tea. I loved the coffee-chocolate and lemon tea!!! In the end my friends bought some of the products and some bought “Kopi Luwak” or civet coffee. It was quite expensive, 100k rupiahs per 100 grams. I even got a bag of coffee-chocolate for free because I “brought” them many generous customers. However, I gave the freebie to my friends as they were the ones who bought a lot of stuff there. I’m a nice person, aren’t I? =P

 

After guiding them around Bali, I thought to myself that becoming a guide isn’t a bad idea. It might not be a job that’s gonna earn me lots of money but it’s quite fun! Perhaps I’ll be a part-time tour guide in the future. Hahaha..

Facebook Thingy

You were born on 2nd day of February, Thursday.

Your Life : You have great common sense but usually fail to follow through. This might happens because you are too busy with your mission and shut yourself from the outside world. You are clever and profound so there's a slight chance for self-control problem.

Your Love : Your love progress slowly, and quietly. You seem to be contented with your unrequited love. Your are a romantic and loyal lover.

Results!!

The texture is SLIGHTLY better and the taste is somewhat the same but less sweet. I prefer the one that the dough sits for only about 2 hours. Oh, I edited the recipe on the previous post as egg-milk mixture makes the top shiny but creates a kind of hard layer. I think the recipe is decent but still far from perfect. I still need to play around with the ratio of the ingredients and the topping. Oh, the kare-pan didn’t come out so well but it was edible.

Sitting the dough

Nice shiny top but it’s kinda hard =(

Cracks on the top layer of the bread X(

Bread (not really) Experiment

I’ve been making breads (those sweet Taiwanese breads or roti unyil or sweet buns or whatever you call it) recently and I enjoy every time I make breads. Making breads can train your arm muscles. Those 10 minutes of kneading the dough give me the arms training that I’ve been lacking of.

Actually I started making breads because my attempt to make pretzel wasn’t successful and those failed pretzel had the texture of a bread. So I then decided to use that failed pretzel recipe as a breads recipe. The results were fine. I even got compliments from my parents and cousin as they insisted that I must have bought those breads from some bakery instead of baking them myself. :) But still, I’m no expert.

Back to the title of the post and enough of the bragging. Usually I sit my dough for about 1 to  2 hours to let the yeast to take some action but a lot of people say that the longer the dough is sat, the better the breads would taste. I’m not really sure why the breads would taste better if the dough is sat longer. The yeast eats up sugar and converted it to carbon dioxide which is trapped in the dough giving the airy texture of the bread and ethanol which vaporizes during baking, the longer the dough is sat, the more carbon dioxide and and ethanol are produced. However, how do more carbon dioxide and ethanol make the taste of the breads better? Is it because of the the airier texture? or is it because of the more murdered dead yeast present in the breads? Well, this is NOT for me find out and not the experiment that I’m talking about. My experiment is actually to prove whether the breads taste better if I sit the dough longer. *** After doing a little googling I found this site which says, “Some sugar molecules get sidetracked and are converted into alcohols, acids, and esters--substances which add to bread's flavour.” ***

As for now, I’ve been sitting the dough for about 6 hours and I’m going to bake and fry (I’m planning to make kare-pan too) it at noon. Result will be posted soon.

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Bread (Basic)

Ingredients:

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of sugar

1 tsp of salt

11 grams (usually 1 packet) of instant yeast

1 spoon of butter

1 cup of cold water or milk

Directions:

1. Melt the butter
2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl or on a clean big chop board
3. Make a well at the centre of the mixture
4. Pour in the water or milk and melted butter to the well
5. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon or knead it with your clean hands until the ingredients are mixed well
6. Keep stirring until the mixture doesn’t feel sticky anymore
7. If the mixture is still very sticky, add more flour spoon by spoon and keep mixing until the mixture doesn’t stick anymore
8. After the mixture is not sticky anymore, knead the dough for about 10 minutes
9. Sit the dough for 10 minutes
10. Cut the dough into the desired amount
11. Shape it and/or fill it with chocolate, cheese, jam or whatever you want
12. Place them on a greased baking pan and let them rise again for about 1.5 to 2 hours
13. Bake them for about 10 to 15 minutes at 180 degree Celsius

Tips:

1. If you want to add more melted butter and/or eggs, reduce the amount of water or milk. The total liquid ingredient should be around 1 cup otherwise more flour is required
2. You can brush the top of the dough before baking with egg-milk mixture to get a shiny top

Stuff

My trip to Taiwan was good but not so enjoyable (quite expected though). I liked the tour guide as he was funny and resourceful. He gave us lots of information regarding Taiwan’s history. Just FYI, history was one of my favourite subjects in junior high school.

Taiwan trip aside. Recently I got a few missed calls from these numbers +6281999087550 and +6281999940018. I texted these numbers asking who they were but there was no single reply. I returned their calls but they hung up as soon as I said hello. Hello, the owners of +6281999087550 and +6281999940018, who the heck are you? Usually I ignore trivial things like this but these calls were irritating. They called me in the middle of the night a few times and once at 4 a.m in the morning! I thought those were important calls but turned out to be just prank calls.

If you know the owners of those numbers, please let me know. And oh, whoever reads this post, please help me prank around with the numbers’ owners by sending them random text or those chain mails or give them missed calls (even better).

 

To the owners of those numbers:

If you happen to be my fans or stalkers or something similar to that and just want my autographed photo, let me know.

A Letter

Dear PCD,

I know all of you are disappointed that I’m not watching your concerts in Jakarta and Singapore. Please do not cry or even try to jump out of the stage with suicidal intention when you don’t see me in the pool of audience. I’m still supporting you guys and I’ll watch the concerts via YouTube, if anyone happens to record and upload them. I have my reasons for not being able to attend to your concerts. When I was about to order the ticket for your concert in Jakarta, the tickets were sold out. As for your concert in Singapore, I’m not in the position to spend my saving to go to Singapore for only a day or two. It’s not that I’m not willing to spend my saving to watch you guys but I have a bigger plan that need financing i.e. university. I hope you guys can understand. BTW, I don’t mind if you guys send me an air ticket + Singapore concert ticket.

Enjoy your concerts and please don’t split up yet until I watch your concert.

 

XOXO

one of your thick-skinned fans