GASTRONOMY

Tirta Tawar's Soft Gem: Warung Made Becik

7:00:00 PM

It was mid-day when I entered Raya Ubud, randomly trying to drive myself to a smaller road towards Jalan Tirta Tawar, hoping to find a good yet quiet restaurant, because as we know that Ubud is all about organic delicacies & healthy sweet tooth. So it’s pretty good for those who are concern about what they eat.


I personally prefer to visit a place that is not getting too commercialised by online platform like TripAdvisor, then I found this quiet restaurant accidentally when I slow down my bike, located right in the middle of Jalan Tirta Tawar. It caught my eyes because the interior feels pretty homey, structured by colored terracotta bricks.



I went in and I was greeted by a pretty young crew, and what I saw was, the crews are all female. There were only me as a guest. It was quiet, accompanied with Balinese instrumental melody playing behind, and I hope it’s not too early to judge that Bali has never fail to amaze me by how nice the locals are.

My first impression of the foods were amazing. I ordered these gado-gado (Indonesian-style salad) & coconut juice on my first visit. The taste is everything, man. It was so delicious, knowing that they are using local sugar instead of processed sugar. And yes, I am pretty concerned about their ingredients because I like observing these kind of stuffs while I am at the right place. So, yeah!


Another thing that is captivating is. They recycle their food components. For example, they are serving young coconut. But what they are doing with the outer layer of the coconut is, they collect it all and put it across the restaurant and they make it dry. Later I asked the crew, they are using the dried coconut as wood replacement to make the fire, and they’re using it to make the satay. Pretty cool, huh?


Until today, this place has been my regular place to visit every time I’m going back to the center of the island. Foods are great as they offered lots of plant-based delicacies on the menu list. As an additional, this warung (small restaurant-bahasa Indonesia) has some chillin’ Balinese instrument accompanied with Ubud mid-day delicate breeze.

REALITY TV

Meet & Greet The Amazing Race Asia 5 - Indonesia

2:59:00 PM



Yup! It's happening! Meet & Greet session with this season's Indonesian representatives at The Amazing Race Asia: Childhood Friends Treasuri & Louisa and Travel Hosts Vicky & Rachel. Located at Holy Smokes Senopati at South Jakarta, the meet & greet concept sets during lunch time and chit-chat session with the racers as we are able to know some of the off-camera scenes they didn't aired and another interesting things inside. Here's my personal coverage.




Seriously, we don't expect that the demand would be this much as what we think is we're going to make a humble meet & greet session with the racers. But turned out that there are 50 participants and they came from various cities around Indonesia. And what makes it crazier, there are 1 participant flew all the way from Kuala Lumpur in order to attend the event. Yes, it's jaw dropping.

Another surprise is the exposure from local media. We seriously didn't not see that coming as well. Because we initiated this because we love the show and to be exact, we love our racers. Knowing the support from the media is something that we feel that it’s quite crazy at the beginning because we purely do this with no official sponsors.



The signature t-shirt I designed special for our lovely racers. And yay, it fits them well!







 During the chit-chat sessions, we’re able to know that what’s happening on-and-off camera. And being able to know those things gives us the experience of knowing and understanding the race system from another point of view. Another thing is, season 4’s finalist Om Hussein Sutadisastra made his way to the venue in order to drop a quick hello because Om Hussein was pretty busy with his schedule. Another sweet little thing to the participants, eh? And we thanked Om Hussein to dropping by and say some words to us. We do really appreciate it!



Last set of the event would be the autograph session, where the participants are able to ask for the racers’ autograph in a little post card. And at this point, we thanked Louisa & Treasuri and Vicky & Rachel for being very humble dealing with our countless questions and curiousities!




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SHOUT OUT FROM THE TEAM BEHIND!

Okay, so. Jadi di section ini saya mau kasih shout-out buat tim belakang layar dan gimana kita ngerjain ini semua. First of all, kami tuh emang kenal dari forum The Amazing Race Asia yang udah di provide sama AXN dari season 1, dan itu tahun 2006. Dan dari season 1 pun kita rutin bikin nonton bareng dari jaman Mardy & Marsio. Lanjut terus sampe terakhir 2010 kita masih ngadain gathering bareng Hussein & Natasha sama Yani & Nadine juga.

Nah cuma karena acara nya sendiri ini vakum sekitar 6 tahun, jadi forumer-forumer yang lain ada yang udah di belahan dunia mana, ada yang udah nikah, ada yang udah ini, ada yang udah itu. Udah mencar gitu, lah. But seriously we maintained our friendship through The Amazing Race US Version juga kadang-kadang. And yes kita jadi kaya temenan di real life gitu. Sampe akhirnya tahun 2016 ini mereka bikin lagi season 5, dan akhirnya secara nggak langsung forumer-forumer ini pun reunited lagi satu sama lain.

Sampe akhirnya setelah episode 9 yang heart-breaking itu, nah kami-kami ini mikir kayanya bisa banget kalo bikin 1 lagi gathering untuk mengapresiasi Louisa & Treasuri karena emang menurut kami tuh, mereka emang race very well, mereka berhasil banget bikin Indonesia terlihat kuat banget di hadapan tim lain dan ya sedikit banyaknya harus banget untuk di apresiasi. Jadi ya akhirnya yaudah, kami inisiatif untuk bikin 1 gathering terakhir dan melibatkan temen-temen fans juga.


Disini ada Gaga (Airlangga) yang sebenernya kami nganggep Gaga tuh sebagai Pak Ketua gitu, ya. Karena emang Gaga yang paling sibuk buat dealing ini itu nya. Terus juga ada Sheila, Windy sama Evan yang ikut ambil bagian soal flow pendaftaran sama logistik & offline sponsorship. Lalu ada Tika yang akhirnya kami daulat untuk jadi MC & moderator meet & greet. Lalu sama ada saya, deh. Nah disini tuh saya responsible untuk graphic design support nya lah, ya. Dari segala banner, spanduk, post card, dan grafis baju yang dipake sama participant & racers-racers yang dateng, dan ending nya jadi dokumentasi, deh.

Dari saya pribadi, I thanked each one of you, guys. Nggak nyangka aja sih karena kita ber 6, meeting juga mostly online dan saya yakin banget kalo masing-masing pasti sibuk sama kerjaan sendiri, dan masih nyempetin waktu untuk ngurusin event ini. Dan makasih makasih makasih banget udah diberikan kesempatan untuk mengisi grafis dari event nya biar acara lebih ada tema nya juga. Hehehe.

Nggak lupa juga terima kasih untuk Louisa, Treasuri, Rachel, Vicky dan Om Hussein yang udah hadir dalam acara meet & greet ini. Terima kasih banyak untuk para participant yang udah dateng ke acara ini. Kami juga minta maaf apabila ada kekurangan di event ini. But at last, we hope you’re happy after all! :) Semoga ada kesempatan buat ngumpul bareng lagi, ya! :D

GASTRONOMY

Moody Morning at Asagao

11:45:00 AM

It was a quiet yet bright morning when I start my day. As I usually working away on Friday, me and my working partner (her name is Alin, and I guess she’s going to be happy if I mentioned her name here) are willing to look for is there any good coffee shop to finish our tasks. So yeah, we decided to go to Asagao Coffee Shop that is located in Northern Serpong.


I personally arrived at 10 AM so there was no customers yet, I guess. So yeah, it was a pretty good first impression at this Japanese themed coffee shop. They put the whole menu at the front of the space in a squared looking blackboard, nicely done with cute chalk illustration as well.


As I arrived here, they still put the Christmas theme and I had my ecstatic moment looking at the mini Christmas tree they put as a gimmick in each tables and I found it that it’s pretty cute at the moment. The space itself is pretty narrow, but there’s an interesting space where the sunlight comes in and it creates a nice shadow, complete with industrial like space finishing.

I had an iced Americano at first. And I can say that they create a pretty good coffee. Eventhough I can taste the acid but when I put some portions of sugar, it blended pretty well. Meanwhile my friend had her Hot Latte, and I had the chance to sip hers. The latte are pretty well blended, yet just a bit slushy but so far it tastes good.

As the time flies and I think I need additional companion, I ordered their signature menu, the Kori Kohi. Kori Kohi is basically a glass of coffee milk. But the coffee is modified into numbers of ice cubes form, and a glass of milk in another glass. What you can do is to pour the milk towards the coffee cube and mix it well until the coffee cube melted. And surprisingly it was pretty good as well.

Basically, me and Alin loved this place as we stayed around 6 hours finishing our tasks and the crews were quite nice. Good music, good ambience, good pillows, good mini Christmas tree as well. Oh, I was thinking to bring one of them home, though. But no. Better not.

TRAVEL

Broken-hearted Tombstone at Pulau Onrust

3:38:00 PM

It was a cloudless morning when I arrived at Pulau Onrust, one tiny island located at Kepulauan Seribu Selatan, around 15 kilometers from Muara Kamal pier. Just like the mainland Jakarta that has lots of stories to tell, who knows that this island has a lot of stories on the past as well.

As my guide told me that this island is covered with mystical air, I already prepared myself if something might happen during my visit. One tale that is interesting for me to share is the tombstone of Maria van de Velde, a beautiful young Dutch women who lived at Pulau Onrust.


Van De Velde committed suicide because her Dutch boyfriend did not come to the island at the exact day of their wedding. And visitors can take a look at her tombstone located on the back of the island. Yet her tombstone is carved with a poetry about Van De Velde’s love story.

Around 300 years after her death, local people who stayed at the island believed that they sometimes see the Van De Velde’s spirit walking around the graveyard with her beautiful gown, as she might still waiting for her late groom to come with.


As it’s a historical tale that the guide told me, I experienced something interesting during my visit. My camera focus went blur couple times when I tried to take a photograph of Van de Velde’s tombstone, and I set my camera focus in auto, not the manual. Later the guide told me to “ask” for her permission. And after I did that, I surprisingly able to take her tombstone photograph.

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A humble submission about historical story of Jakarta for @iwashere_id 's upcoming event: Portuguese Trail.

PHOTOS

2017 New Year's Eve

9:19:00 PM

Couple years back, I do spent my New Year’s Eve catching fireworks at the capital city because I don’t think I’d go out of town during the date. This year actually a bit different than previous years because there’s no car free night event around Bundaran HI or Monas, and I just browsed the news at the afternoon that there’ll be no event on that. So I am thinking to keep a spot to Old Town (Kota Tua) area in West Jakarta, accompanied with Irwan, my gym buddy.
We arrived at Kota Tua around 8 PM, and there are all humans at the center of the piazza. All peoples gathered there waiting for the fireworks. They’re like all sitting on the cement floor. It was pretty chaotic but I guess we handled that well as the time clicked pretty quick to the midnight.. And finally, the fireworks are shooting towards the bright night sky.


For me, I kinda see that fireworks could be a good symbol for a shimmering hope. That is why I always love fireworks. I thanked 2016 for all lessons learned. Because I do have some goals to achieve this year. And I am willing to hang a quite big hope for it. And not to forget that, give me a little luck and I’ll conquer the land. Please be good, 2017.