Thursday, February 3, 2011

Cooking Hack

Happy Chinese New Year All!
This time I have the opportunity to "celebrate" the Chinese New Year in Singapore. A country with most of its population are Chinese.
At first, I thought it is going to be glorious to be here during the CNY because the people here are more enthusiast which makes there's something to be consider. Since most of the people here were celebrating the event, most of the food courts / hawkers or even supermarkets are close.

Some experience to help my parents running the small restaurant when they're still alive, certainly helps me a lot :)
So during this opportunity I would like to share one of the cooking hack :)
Cooking hack is basically finding the substitute ingredients due to some certain reasons... it could be because of the unavailability... or even because you're too stingy to buy it hihihi...

This time as my sample I would like to introduce my family "tomato sauce" recipe. This simple sauce is quite easy to make and useful for some cooking, such as: steak and egg foo young.
The original required ingredients are: bottled tomato sauce, sugar, vinegar, margarine and for additional ingredient: cornstarch.

Here, actually I could find all of the ingredients. However, due to the packaging which are really big, I didn't buy the sugar and vinegar. And I also forgot to buy
margarine and cornstarch :P

So I started to "scavenge" my refrigerator to find something that can be useful for substituting the ingredients that I didn't have.

First, for margarine is a bit easy, I could use one or two tea spoons of olive oil to make the sauce a bit "greasy".

For the sugar and vinegar, however, it's a bit difficult. Actually, lime could be used as alternative to replace the vinegar. But unfortunately it's not available in the refrigerator.
So I start to look at the available canned soft drinks. Ahaa... there's a lime tea... It contains the lime and sugar... however I believe the taste will be weird because of it also contains tea :P
Then I started to look around again, and found a perfect substitute... which is lime soda drink :P It contains lime and sugar... you don't have to worry about the soda... which is actually only carbon dioxide... so when you boil the carbonated drink... the carbon dioxide gas will be evaporate :)

Finally, for the cornstarch... I couldn't find the alternative... But it won't effect the taste of the sauce... just adding extra "sticky" feel to the sauce... so we can skip this one :)

Maybe the substitute ingredients sounds weird... but trust me the taste is not that different... hehehe...

That's all...

Have fun trying to do some cooking hack but do it with your own risk! hahaha...

Monday, January 24, 2011

Pollution Indicator

As some of you may have noticed that since last few weeks I've an opportunity to be assigned in one of the most well developed country in Asia, Singapore.

One of the thing that I am amazed from this country is the public transportation. It's really well managed and convenient and also relatively cheap. You can go to anywhere of this island with few dollars only.

And in this opportunity, I would like to share how it is compared to my beloved pathetic country... but I will make the comparison in the different way... as usual :P

In my point of view this well organized transportation... made this country is way less polluted if we compared to Jakarta.
Hey, it's not just a nonsense assumption which has no proof... It doesn't require us to be a scientist with all of the fancy laboratory equipment to prove this...
We can use our own body part to help this experiment. I'm not kidding... If you're confused... let me give you a hint... nose...
Yeah we can use our nose-s#it to assess the air quality... we can see the color of it... hihihi...
If it's brown or even black... which I usually had while in Jakarta... I think the air pollution is quite high...
But while I'm here... although I used public transportation all of the time and walk more than 10K steps daily average... my mucus's color always white to bright-yellow... which can be interpreted as a good air condition... hihihi...

I want to give you some picture of the specimen to help giving the illustration... but... currently it's still in the process of the specimen gathering... hopefully next month it will be sufficient hahaha... kidding :P

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Farewell...

This post is especially dedicated for appreciation to my friends who I used to hang out with while working here in Bali.

  • Care(ne)les(s) the parsimonious -> I never thought that there is a living creature here in earth who has stingy level in the same league as I am :P To illustrate how cheap he is, one day when he bought us some “bright moon” we thought that he was ordered by the leader (*kindly refer to the leader) to do this.
    He is also a tempe addict; this should explain his parsimony level :D. Additionally, because of “the overdose”, his Y chromosome already gives the impression to start mutating; developing another “leg” so it looks like it will turn into X chromosome xixixix

  • Deky the lucky -> for a person who nearly almost never wins a lottery or draw games like me... I certainly envy to you! :D

  • Darwee (as pronounced from the OZ guy in the TV)-> not much for this new comer, so this time I would like to remind you that you haven’t gave the ritual offerings to the senior members! :P

  • Laurensia(l) the leader -> hail to the leader... sometimes we obey your order because you’re right... but often we obey merely because we still want to be in one piece :P But this leader is not that bad when it comes to food. She always shares food, also her experiment on new recipes. It is too often until sometimes we think that she’s doing this kind of experiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_North_Korea#Testing_deadly_poisons

  • Yunianto the g*y -> c’mon it’s time to move on and forget the past even though we all know that you’re having traumatic experience with your previous love and she’s obviously still haunting like North Korean homing missile, but you can’t use it for a reason to be a g*y :D

  • Nita the brown (take it as a compliment since I'm not saying black) -> pursue those bule-bule what are you waiting for?! One of our friend admitted that you have “the quality” so good luck! :D

  • Unay the kupret -> you should rename the bank where you’re working to its antonym... to represent your characteristic :P

  • Albert the boxer (Chris John)-> I would like to apologize that when we’re in the same badminton team, I couldn’t glorify and bring your badminton career as successful as your boxing career :P

  • Tiar the silent and Devy the Manohara --> silent which also means vibrates in the cell-phone... hope that both of you vibrate all of the time... xixixi... wait, don’t get me wrong... what I mean is the vibration of love in the new family :P

  • Selly the ukdw-er -> we graduated from the same university, but that doesn’t mean we have the same quality... I mean she’s better than me for sure :P

  • Edo the broker -> if I have enough money to spend to be invested in the stock market, surely I will contact you :P

  • Vera the adventurer -> she really passionate on nature, dunno maybe she’s born in wildlife or zoo... :P and she’s really masculine... that the only feminine side that I could see from her was when she cooked us pancakes hehehe... but the pancake she created was surprisingly delicious... :P

  • Jenal the overpaid -> he always think that he’s overpaid... and I hope that he’s getting promoted to be manager soon so he become more overpaid... hehehe... and I could give you one tip: Be less useful! It will help you to get promoted and make sure that M*R*N club is expanding! Hahaha... kidding :D

  • Hartoyo the panda -> thank you for the suggestion on the freakology and those mean and evil books that really worth reading :P

  • EP the hobbit -> just use your OZ PR or maybe some of our colleagues in Bandung can introduce you to “someone” :D

  • MarKus the -> congratulation and happy working in OZ! Finally you can ripe what you have sow on that “torturing” project... :P

  • Merisca and Defeng -> hope both of you start a family soon... and happily ever after... and of course without any “violence in the house ladder” a.k.a KDRT hihihi...

  • ToHa the PhD -> just keep up your uniqueness... and I hope your first child is look more like his/her mother than look like you... kidding :P

  • Deddy the deviationist -> hope you can go back to the right path... :P

Once again thank you for being like a family to me. I will tell you guys how awesome you are to my child and grandchildren... nah... you guys aren’t that good :P

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
Richard Bach

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Trip to memory lane of 2010

Since today is the first day of 2011, I would like to say my greetings to all of you: Happy new year!

Well, this time I would like to share a list of some achievement during the year 2010. Mostly were my 2010 resolution that nearly almost everything were achieved. And yes 2010 was really a great year for me :) Although everything didn't run very smooth... but that's life... shit happen hehehe :P

It is not a show-off list, but merely because I want to list all of the blessing that already given to me :) I guess this should be useful to make me thankful, especially when I was down. And hopefully it will help me out to stop complaining about anything... as mentioned by some of my friends :P


  1. Passed the IELTS with band score more than I need :)

  2. Car-driving license. Maybe for other "normal" people it is just a simple thing. For me, however, it is a great achievement because I had to experience horrible car accident which took both of my parents. The "trauma" was haunting me and discourage me for almost 6 years. But the year 2010 I finally can manage the trauma and get the car driving license :)

  3. Mortgage.
    I can finally have enough saving to start getting a mortgage for a house. Although I have to pay the bill until the next decade :P and it is considered small... isn't located on the urban area... but I hope this should be a good investment :P

  4. Opportunity to work in abroad :)
    End of this year... I got a new job offer which give me a chance to have a training in abroad. And it was scheduled for 4 months starting January 2011. To be honest I'm quite excited, but also sad, since I have to leave this awesome island, Bali :P But I guess sometimes we have to make sacrifice for something that we pursue :)


I guess that's all of list that I think it will craft some memory in my life :)
Once again happy new year 2011! Let it be a prosperous and joyful year to all of us :)