S.O.C – Save Our Clothes

The basic rule when you wants to sort your stuff out is: don’t feel bad if you have to throw your nice pants out of your closet – because it’s to small for you and you don’t think you be able to shape your body back to that size- OR you have to hand-down your nicest pair of shoes –because it’s too big, you bought it while on special and on that moment half size bigger than your feet size doesn’t seem a problem but killing your back afterward every time you wore it-.

I knew that as from my mum who always throw one thing out every time she bought a new one, so her closet was always fit, neat, and tidy.

Learning by watching is completely different with learning by doing. And I’m doing very big work. Not as simple as throw one out because something new need home, it’s more like emptying the whole closet, move out some decent and wearable summer outfit onto boxes, and pack them away – yes, we moving anytime soon-. And sort and throw away some un-fit clothes.

So, here I am, sit down on my bedroom carpet with my closet door wide-open.

Every time I grabbed my pants or clothes from the closet, I have no courage to put it on my throw away box. Even I know its way too small. Like 2 sizes below my size now. It’s always something playing on the back of my mind that I’ll be skinny again sometimes, loosing another 10kg, and those pants will fit again beautifully –on my dream-.

When I finished, I was amaze. Whole closet looking good, neat and clean. Great.
But…wait a second, what happened with all the clothes lay on carpet? I can barely walked pass of it to the door. Gosh! Is that what I’ve been doing this whole time/ Moving pile of clothes from one place to another. And my ‘throw-away’ basket that sit on the corner –that supposed to be overflowing with clothes- only quarter full.

Never though before that sorting day will be this hard. Today is just the beginning of the whole process of cleaning up my house before moving.

And I’m desperate.

Is someone willing to help me….please….

SEX and the OPRAH

I and Oprah just don’t work.

So, when I loudly shouted to the kids to finish their dinner quickly, because mummy wants to watch Oprah, I can hear the silence. Suddenly all quiet, until my husband mention it. “Oprah?”

“Yep,” I replied, nodding without take my eyes from my youngest that still busy with her baked-potato.

“But you never watched it. Why now?” with curious tone. “And why they air Oprah on evening prime time?”

Too many question, too busy dealing with the dishes. And time flies. Suddenly, it’s 7.30.
“Mum, Oprah…,” my son remind me.

I sat nicely on the sofa, tried to get my daughter sit next to me –nice try- and having a mum-daughter time (or mum-daughter time with Oprah) and didn’t work.

And here we go…The guest. They walked to the couch on the middle of Oprah set, with very familiar music background. First, Sarah Jessica-Parker aka Carrie Bradshaw, And then Cynthia Nixon aka Miranda Hobbes, the Kristin Davies aka Charlotte York and Kim Cattral aka Samantha Jones. And Mr. Big.

“Oh, I get it. It’s Sex and the City. That is why you watch Oprah.”

Hmmmm…I just rhyming and mumbling something without any meaning. I’m too busy watching them. Their style, their shoes, their outfit. No time to make a comment of my husband comment.

Yes, I’m not an ‘Oprah’ devoted woman. I never watched it…wait a second, this is my second, I watched once before. Maybe 3-4 years ago, when she had all the Sex and the City cast on her show –as now- , saying goodbye after final episode of their TV show, and they pulled the curtain down, ruled out about making Sex and the City on big screen (guess what? Hooraaay…it’s on Cinema now!)
But I never interested in this show. Even when she had Tom Cruise jump over her couch, announced his engagement or something to Katie Holmes. All of my girlfriends from workplace talked about the issue been rolling on the show, bought the magazines with Oprah gossip, and yet it didn’t move my finger an inch to press my remote button, switching channel to any station airing Oprah.

Not because I don’t like her, or the show –honestly, I don’t know how the show been going, or the format, or anything-. I just not into it. Above all, I prefer doing something useful, like surfing the internet –if you happy to call it useful- rather than spend one hour devoting to the show –sorry Oprah-.

I do admire her, though. In my sort of way, from my very own personal view. She is talented woman. And clever. How a woman -with help from her team of course- can have a show that became a magnet for most of women around the world. Smart. That is the thing that I look up on her. Put aside her personal relationship problem - I didn’t want to know that; which is hard because my girlfriend kept talking about it every time we worked together as if no other topics in this world-, she a pro, doing her work very well.

Good on you, Oprah. And thanks for shared the Sex with me –again.

Where have you been?

Where have you been?

The answer is: I don’t know.
I don’t know why I have no time to write anything, even a very simple thing. I’m too busy, I guess. With heaps of things need to be pack, with my side-job as a cook-book editor –gosh, the deadline seems not far away- and of course with the kids.
I got sooo many article sitting pretty on papers on my desk. Just have no time to re-write it here.
Anyway,
Have a nice weekend….

You're Invited

My second writing for SatuJakarta -South Jakarta Community Magazine, been published on April 2008 edition. You can read on page 13; You're Invited

Happy reading!

Goodbye my Maxtor….

Life is always unpredictable, full of surprise on every corner you turn off. Good things happened, bad things happened more often.

I had to say goodbye to my Maxtor today. Its life ended 2 nights ago, when I couldn’t access every-single-file I stored on it. I tried to kept calm, took a deep breath and tried again and again. After dozen of clicks attempt, and I seem lost connection with my best friend for the last 2 years, I called for rescue.

You know, women these days had very advance and sophisticated gadget, even state-of-the-art gadget. When it comes to service failure, most of women will came to this stages: panic attack –not knowing what to do, can’t thing clearly for next step-; tried to unplug-and plug all the cords; gave up ; calling for rescue. I experienced all those stages. When it came to rescue, I tried to tell my husband carefully, not only I don’t want to bother him checking my computer on 11pm that night –I wish, though, deep inside my though- but more like I was afraid I can’t face the reality if he does checking, that my external hard-disk called Maxtor had decide to froze itself.

Hard to accepted, bitter to swallowed, but it’s so true that after Z checked my Maxtor, it doesn’t work. I smiled –nervously- and said: ok, I sort them out tomorrow.

No need to wait until tomorrow, Z quickly googled some data recovery-company, and found one that look promising.

So, this afternoon I traveled 30km north with Z and Maxtor on his bag, meet this data-recovery guy, and I had to listed all of my most important file on the hard-disk. Most important ? Everything is important, of course. All those photos from our travels, my son photos since he was born 5.5years ago, my daughter photos from the last 1 year, and all of data for my online-shop, to name a few. Could I decide which one I want to recover first? Of course I can’t!

I still have to wait for final news from this guy. He dropped us an e-mail explaining what happened –about the data was corrupted, and so on and so on- and we agreed to pay him to recover all the data. Not cheap though.

I should learn not to put every-single-data without back-up on one place. I should stored some copies virtually. Or I should back to the era that put everything on writing on my notepad is much much better way.

For now, I just have to wait, and wait, and wait. For 4 until 8 days.

Bye Maxtor. Wish me luck.

Honey-soy Chicken

Serve 4-5


You need:
*1 kg of Chicken Drummettes (about 10-14 pieces)
*1/2 cup of dark soy sauce
*1/2 cup of honey
*3 garlic cloves minced
*flour for dusting


How to:
Mix soy sauce and honey on heated pan on medium heat. When it dissolve and mixed, add minced garlic, stir until mix well, turn off the heat
Pre-heat the oven. 180C for 10 minutes
Dust drummetttes with flour, arrange in baking tray
Pour honey-soy mixture on to drummettes, spread evenly
Bake for about 45-60 minutes until golden brown. Turned it over once when halfway cook if necessary
Ready to serve


TIPS & HINTS
Indonesian kecap manis goes very well and could be use instead of dark soy sauce
Honey-soy drummettes can be serve with plain rice, fried rice, brown rice, or pasta and vegetables with mayonnaise dressing

Simple Spaghetti with Sausages

Serve 3-4


You need:
*1/2 kg of beef sausages, sliced
*1 red capsicum, chopped
*250grams carrots, chopped
*2 tomatoes, chopped
*1 can of tomato paste (+/- 200ml)
*1 can of chopped tomato (+/- 200gr)
*1 onion, chopped
*2 tablespoon of Olive oil
*500gr spaghetti, cook according packaging instruction
*Salt & pepper, to season


How to:
Heat olive oil in a large pan
Stir onion, capsicum and carrots in, about 30 seconds
Add beef sausages, stir/mix well about 1 minutes or until sausages cooked
Add can of chopped tomato and tomato pasta, stir well
Add chopped tomatoes, mix well
Season with salt & pepper
Pour meat sauce over cooked spaghetti
Serve while hot


TIPS :
When cooking your pasta, always add your pasta when on water is boiling. Don’t need to add oil on the water or after draining the pasta, as the oil will coating pasta and make pasta doesn’t absorb flavour from sauce well.

Once you drain the cooked pasta from the pot, rinse pasta under stream of cold water to prevent pasta from overcook

You can always add basil (chopped) on your meat sauce on the last minute. It will enrich the sauce (add on the same time when you add fresh chopped tomato)

Sprinkle your spaghetti with parmesan cheese, it make taste better
Penne can be use instead of spaghetti