Inside Wants Out

Did you ever want something so bad that you burst into tears and weep? If you're four years old then I'll be surprised if you don't. Problem is, you're not. I'm not. Hopefully, we're all not. But I have this desire, very very big desire, to see the world. I have always had this wish but never as strong as it is now. I spent the past two hours staring at my laptop screen and scouring for any travel agent in Indonesia that offers international tours. And unfortunately, no offers fit my pocket.

I grew up in Indonesia, not a developed country, but beautiful and daring. I love my country so much but it's like living in a box you've given birth into; At first, the box seemed so big and spacious. As you grow up, you eventually realize that the box is not growing with you. It doesn't expand. Within sixteen years, your head and arms and leg were struggling to fit inside the box. Some people were able to adapt and feel comfortable living in that box because they made up soothing reason to entertain themselves. "I've lived in this box my entire life and I feel fine. I will not sacrifice this just to have a peek of the outside world" or "I know my strength. I'll never be able to break this box. Rather than fracturing my limb in the process, I think I'll survive living inside this box"

But I don't want this kind of life! Ordinary is boring. Normal is overrated. I want to not only take a peek of the outside world but also be a part of it. See it with my own eyes. Breathe the air with my own nose, hear the crowd's voices with my own ears and feel the ground with my own feet. I don't want to leave this world with only a few pictures in my camera. It will be a waste of money since the camera worth a fortune, right? I truly believe that the world is too small for someone with a will. And hopefully I can overcome this economic trench between me and my outside world and then finally, I can live the life I want to live.

Sure I'm exaggerating. There is more to life than just filling in photo albums. I've said it myself. But is it wrong to have a wish? I will never know whether I'll be able to break my box or end up exhausted and surrender, adapted to live inside the box. This dream is a one-to-a-million shot. I will need a hefty sum of money to be able to live the life I want to live. I even doubted myself will this ever be come true. But a girl can dream, can't she?

To all the places I have not visit, yet. And to the languages I have not mastered, yet. And to all my friends I have not met, yet: I love you, unconditionally. -Lindy Dharmawan

Aloha Means Hello and Goodbye

What's with the sad title? Oh nooo, it was not sad. It's inspiring. Because we all know that every hello followed with a goodbye. The problem is not everyone know when to say goodbye, or how many time they have left until they have to say a goodbye. A goodbye can be planned or it can arrive like a wind and they'll be gone before you know it.

Oops, I forgot to greet the bloggers. Hi everyone. It's been a long time since I posted for the last time. I swear I tried to post as often as I can but consider this condition: I'm on a boarding school with super hectic schedule and many competition to participate and I have to win all of them in order to get a scholarship and my modem is not available and my school network is sooo moody, looking at that situation, I am grateful if I can write one post per month. Okay but I will not talk about that. At least not at the moment.

Guess where am I now bloggers? New Yooorrrk! Malaaang! City of Flowers and City of Apples! What am I doing here? I am participating a competition. A biology competition held by Universitas Negeri Malang (Malang State University). The competition is called Lebah Madu and the theme of this competition is "Where Great Minds Compete To Become A Real Biologist"

It was fun and amusing. We didn't get into the final because our experiment score are very low, but thank God we manage to become the best performer in case study. We scored 91,5 out of 100!! Isn't that fun-fu**ing-tastic? I feel bad to my friend that I didn't manage to get into the final. But I personally, feel satisfied because of that case study score. That means we are ready for the theoritical aspect.

Oh, why we? Because I don't fight alone. We enrolled as a team and my teammate is Tiroy Junita. She is a super smart student and I'm glad having her as my teammate. We also meet our cousin-in-law (literally in law), the brilliant class students, Zuriel Immanuel Natan and Yosua Heresta. They are pretty bright as well but nonetheless we still score better than them :P

On Sunday (that means yesterday) we spent the whole day exploring Batu, the tourism city of Malang with BC students and our guardian teacher, Mr. Dion. First of all we arrived at an agrotourism object. There we picked two apples and two guava and eat an apple friedrice. After that we took a really nice photoshoot and of we went to Cuban Rondo Waterfall. It is amaziiiiinng there. The cliff are soo cool and the air is so cold. We took pictures in front of the waterfall, buy some souvenirs and head back to the hotel.

The next day we searched for more memento.Our friends asked us to buy apple crackers and jackfruit crackers so we went for them. I bought some Malang Apples as well. We also stopped by a crystal store called Crystalline that it's advertisement we saw at the airplane on our way to Malang. We love its handphone cover so we're looking forward to have it. But when we asked about the price, I got hopeless. It is sooo expensive. Almost 1,2 million rupiahs per item. So we skipped it. We stopped for a while at an ancient ice cream shop called Toko OEN. It has been in there since 1930, it means since the Dutch Colonial era. I ordered the one called Calypso Fantasy and it is awesome :9

We have to go back to the airport by 1 p.m. We had an uneventful airport experience, a normal flight and I'm back in Jakarta. I love coming back to Jakarta because Jakarta is such a great place to live in. They have everything in here. Name it and you'll find it here. But coming back to Jakarta means I have to go back to my routine, which I resent. Well, not actually resent but I don't want to learn anything but Biology at the moment. I think one of the reason I still failing is that I'm not focused. I don't give a shit about Cambridge or any other thing going on in my school. I just wanted to win many competitions for my CV in order to get a scholarship. Selfish? Tell me about it. Well, the point is I just hate saying goodbye and go back to my routine. Just like when I come back from OSN. But, every hello has it's own goodbye. So, Goodbye Malang and Hello Routine :)

Holy-Dayssss

My good! My God! My Goodness!!! I can’t believe it’s holiday at last!

Well, actually, holiday’s over. I just hope that I can say that word one more time in this situation -______- Hahahaha.

Dear blogger, after all these chaos, event and et cetera, I can finally post my blog again eventhough (as always) because of the assignment Mrs. Desi gave me before. This time’s assignment is to compose a recount text about our last holiday and post it in our blog. BUT, before I tell you about my holiday’s story, first of all, we must know the origin of this journey. Let’s check it out.

Origin:

Earlier this year, I begged to my dad about having a family vacation because the last big family vacation I ever had is when I was in 4^th grade of primary school. We went to Singapore and Malaysia that time. Since then, we hadn’t had a grand family vacation. We usually spent our vacation dining in many kinds of restaurant, visiting malls, watching movies and else. And by I mean ‘grand’ is that we go on a vacation, with the whole member of my nuclear family to some place far away and stay for a quite a while. My father agreed. And I had one requirement. NO HIGHLAND. I am SICK of mountain view, forests, green scenery, tea leaves, cold and damp air. It gave me a nausea everytime I think about it. Eww. I missed BEACHES, seashore, the sound of the waves, making sandcastle, feel the sun on my face, getting blown by the sea wind. It is my kind of World’s Nirvana, hahaha. Maybe that’s because it’s in my blood. I was born as an archipelago kid, born in Batam, part of the Riau Archipelago. In my first month in this world, my mother had taken me to the beach. So I guess me and beaches are like calling each other to become reunited with a gazillions of joy in each heart.

So, my father decided that we can go to Parai Beach in Bangka Belitung. My father said that the beaches there were still virgin and isolated. So it is like we’re in our private beach. But I refused. Beside visiting beautiful beaches, I would like to do many activities as well. It will be extremely boring if you go to a beach and only sit back and relax and watch the beach as the time pass by.And looking at how my father described the beach, I concluded that the beach was very isolated that nothing fun and glamorous will be there. And I guess that you have already guessed which state in Indonesia that we visited? Yep! It’s BALI. The decision-making-process really took some time so that we were too late to book an airplane ticket. So we decided to go on a tour, explore Java Island by car to get to Bali. Then it’s settled.

Journey:
(Okay, let me tell you before, that I am not going to write any date except the departure date and the arrival date. Now let’s begin)

Day 1:

It was 23 December 2009. I was waiting in my house for my father to come home from his office and then we’re ready to set off. Oh and yes, we took our driver with us, Mr. Didik so he can drive the car back home because we came home from Bali by airplane. Our first destination is to Majalengka, my mother’s hometown. It is in the route to our real destination, Jogjakarta. We spent a night there.

Day 2:

Early morning, we continued the journey using the Southern Route. We managed to arrive at Jogjakarta at 4 in the afternoon and checked in at Wisma MM UGM because we couldn’t book any big hotel due to the high season and that we only had decided our vacation two weeks before. My dad said that we’re lucky because we can get a place to stay. Almost every hotel in this city had been full booked for the holiday. After settling down, we went to Malioboro Street. I bought many souvenirs for my friends. And since I have two different categories of friends: 109 JHS and MHT, I had to buy many kind of souvenir. I also thought of buying a Batik dress for my vacation in Bali but I didn't find anything my size and my pocket. So I just let it passed. Beside Malioboro, I also visited the Gudeg centre, Dagadu and Bakpia 25. I bought Bakpia for my friends at dorm and also bought a Dagadu T-Shirt with funny writings on it. I rode on a tricycle around Djogja City together with my dad :)

Day 3:

Early in the morning, I woke up and continued the journey. But first, I stopped on Kotagede, the silversmith city. I bought a silver ring with three zircons tied in the ring. I t is very beautiful and luckily, there's a big sale so I can get it for only 80.000 rupiahs! Beside that ring, I also by a pair of earings for only 75.000 rupiahs :)) Our next destination was: Batu Malang. On our way there, we passed Prambanan Temple and couldn't help ourselves to not to dropped by. I bought a bamboo bracelet which I wear until today :)) We arrived at Batu Malang at 10 p.m after gone through the scariest lost ever! The road led us to an uncivilized forest with steep road and curvy turnings. Even scarier, there are no one but us and the fog were starting to come down! Fortunately, with the help of my dad's GPS (thank you technology :)) we can hit the main road and made our way to the hotel safely. This hotel is better than the one in Djogja. The one in Djogja is good, but this one is great. The structure of the hotel is like a cottage.

Day 4:

My Favourite Place In Bandung

Back, back, back :)))
It's me again, tired as I was, just back from Citos after having a fun day out with my friends. And here I am, in front of my dearest laptop and ready to write type!

This assignment is about making a descriptive text and I wanted to describe other than the usual describing topic, so I decided to describe the place I love the most in Bandung. The place's called The Valley. It is one of the most beautiful place I've ever visited!

This is what The Valley looks like in the morning

This is what The Valley looks like at night

What is The Valley anyway? Why do I love to go to this place? Well, The Valley is a bistro cafe and a resort. By bistro, it means (in its original Parisian incarnation) a small restaurant serving moderately priced simple meals in a modest setting (looked it up in Wikipedia.com :P) but it is actually a bit more like an open bar to me. They served a variety of food in that place, but the light and semi-light meals are the best (in any kind of situation. you'll know what I mean if you keep on scrolling down the page). It opens everyday all day long but the best time to visit it is when the nightfall. Or if you prefer different atmosphere, you can try having a brunch there.

The Valley is located in Jl. Lembah Pakar Timur 28, Bandung, DAGO with the telephone number +62 22 253 1052 (I don't know the exact address, so I have to look for it in the Internet. I only know it is located in Dago, but I figured out that maybe you will need a full address in case you're interested in visiting it and the telephone number if you want to make a reservation). You won't miss it because that place has a gigantic name plates.

It is usually pretty crowded knowing how popular it is these days. If you want to have a great spot while dining in, you need to book for it first. The best place for you to be seated in this restaurant, is the spot near the clifside. From that place you can see the panorama of Bandung at night, covered with thousands of lamp that looks like an ocean of stars.

The Scenery Of Bandung From The Valley

What's so special about this place is, its atmosphere and scenery. Every single night, The Valley is bright and stunning with thousand bulbs in every corner of the place. There is a big cyprese in the middle of that place and also covered in bulbs. I think you should see it by yourself to see how beautiful that place is. And the atmosphere, it is so breezy out there and so...romantic. With a beautiful scenery and great music with great food, it is a perfect place to launch a dream date, hahaha.

About the food, and why me and my family prefer light food like appetizer and dessert and pre-main course to the main course itself, it's because the food there are relatively expensive. Not only because it is expensive, but the true mission my family and me brought to that place is to sit back, relax, enjoy the scenery and not to dine in. So we usually order some tea, cappuccino, assorted cakes, shortcakes, soups, pastry to warm up the night. And it beats the main course as well. We tried a steak in the other night but we promised ourselves to not order it again (do not ask why). Another great food for you to try is the pasta. Lasagna, spaghetti are also a wise choices with good taste as well. My dad's friend said that the wine are not pretty enjoyable but we couldn't judge it because we do not drink.

Last topic before I end the post, is I'd like to describe about my favorite cuisine in The Valley. It is.....The Zupa Zuppa Soup!

My Favourite Cuisine In The Valley :)))

I'm pretty sure that you have already know this kind of cuisine, even already taste it before or just like me, have fall in love in this cuisine, but this one is really really different. It is much more creamier and softer than the other zuppa soup I've tasted before. It's sweet and salty and creamy but it doesn't make you have a nausea either. This thing is one of the reason I keep going back to The Valley. The pastry (or some of you guys called it 'the bread') on top of it, has the perfect level of crustiness (whoo, i made my own word) and blends very well with the soup. Well basicly, THIS is something that you mustn't forget to try as soon as you visited The Valley.

Other than The Zupa Zuppa Soup, I also love the Chocolate Cheese Cake and Hot Cappuccino but somehow I feel a strange ingridient in it. My dad said it was some kind of rhum (but not rhum) that people use to add if they live in a cold area, but nevertheless, they are awesome as well. I have to end up my post because it's getting dark and I need to have a rest, please. So I'm leaving. I hope this count as a descriptive text. (I planned to write a descriptive text but in the middle of the text-building I get carried away, haha. My bad :P)

Have a great weekend Blogger! :)