telkom flexi memang 'bukan telpon biasa'

telkom flexi memang bukan telpon biasa = telkom flexi is an unusual phone (not in a positive way).

pusiiiing tujuh keliling... I cannot translate this term to english... but if I can say in english term... telkom flexi makes me crazy!!!! I don't know why the biggest telecom company in indonesia serves its customer with all this problem.

this is the second time I get into this stupid problem. makes me suffer... arrrggghhhhh!!!! anyways, papa nina, oma nina, travel agent, even our gardener cannot reach me because my line keep busy. hey... I'm not a chit-chatty person. I'd rather make a phone call from my home line, not through my cellphone (indonesian baca: h.p.). I wasted my time (2 hours) last month only to change the sim-card at telkom plasa, luckily it was free of charge, but it only last for a month! and, I called the 147 number just now to file a complaint, and the guy said it will take TWO DAYS to process. WHAT!?!?!?

day-4 hong kong trip

time to go home...

I stopped by at a bookstore, I couldn't resist to buy a book. I don't like clothes shopping, but I love book shopping:) I found this interesting book, 'sights and secrets of hong kong' sketched by lorette e.roberts. this book is a collection of beautiful sketches about hong kong and chinese culture.

next time I want to go back to hong kong and do a serious travelling. meaning... learning the chinese arts, culture, and going to museums.

I'll be back!

day-3 hong kong trip

we went to 'mickey house'. nina was super duper excited to meet donald and daisy. it was a little bit drizzling when we arrived at mickey house but later it's just cloudy. compare to the original disneyland in california off course hong kong disneyland is super duper tiny. the layout of the park is exactly the same, but no churros snack in hong kong:) instead it's corn on a cob. and the pop corn was so sweet, no buttered one.

kaka nina had been to disneyland in california for sooo many times, and been to walt disney world in florida, so he's not that excited. but he loved it when he got the chance to learn drawing at disney animation class. he was so excited about it and the result wasn't bad.

went back to the hotel early because papa nina had a business dinner. so we went by mtr. it's a great experience for kaka nina because he loves train. 7.30pm papa nina went for dinner with his colleague and we just went downstairs to have pizza at pizza hut.

day-2 hong kong trip

the weather was great, although it's rather cold. it's no problem. I miss cold weather sooo much. we went for a city tour, started from the peak and madame tussaud's wax museum. we thought that hong kong is almost similar like san francisco. the weather, the crowd at time square is almost as crowded as union square in san francisco, the tram, the bridge. no wonder Chinese people love to stay in san francisco area. may be they feel like at home :)

we went to jumbo kingdom floating restaurant for lunch. it was interesting because we had to ride a boat to get there. the portions are huge. however, since I love chinese food we almost finish everything and only brought the fried tofu for snacking at the hotel.

kaka nina got mario t-shirt (he's mario bros. big fan) so he's super duper happy. since I'm not a big fan of doing shopping so I don't go shopping for souvenir. I guess only tante nina and papa nina's nephews got the shirt. instead, I enjoyed seeing the painting and sculpture exhibition - never ending story by a taiwanese cartoonist, jimmy liao. I love his works. he is very detailed oriented. all his painting done by watercolor and ink. it's too bad that his books are written in chinese, no english. (but I saw in barnes&noble website he mad some children book illustration - too bad I'm not in the states anymore). but I got the postcards and the chinese version book even I don't understand:)

day-1 hong kong trip

sunday morning we all were ready for our hong kong trip. kids were soooo ready and excited to go to 'mickey house' especially nina. I had warned the kids to be good during our trip this time. so off we went to the airport to catch our 9.15 am flight. everything went well, and I felt great too. no more morning sickness, no more cranky, no more asking papa nina to massage my back. hahaha... hmm may be I supposed to travel a lot so I don't think about my pregnancy that much. (hey just realized that all my kids has travelled by airplane by the time they're 3mos. old in my tummy).

anyways this time we stayed at the budget hotel, express by holiday inn. the size of the room is rather small but I don't care as long as I can save money.. what a stingy wife :) but I like it because it's clean, we can just walk around time square to find food, free internet access (so papa nina can still work), free kids meal, breakfast included, no need to spend money for taxi.

6 hours from jakarta to bandung

we started our trip from jakarta at 2pm and eventually arrived in bandung at 8pm!!! a two hour trip becoming a 6 hour terrible trip. the traffic was as crazy during lebaran days. this was only a regular 4 days government holiday but... I don't know what to say. everybody just puff!!! disappeared from jakarta and turned up in bandung.

gardening-2

I like gardening although I'm still young. yes, gardening sounds old fashion, but it makes me sweaty so I don't have to go to a sauna place. it makes me move the whole body so I don't have to go to the gym. it gives me a satisfaction feeling when the plants are growing well - no rotten roots, no bugs eating the leaves, flowers blooming.

to do gardening I don't have to have a big backyard like my mom's. I plant almost all the plants in the pots so I can move them around whenever I want. only 10% are planted on the ground. I even plant the herbs and spices such as daun jeruk, jeruk purut, jeruk nipis, kemangi leaves, daun salam, jahe, kencur, kunyit, sereh, sirih, sirih merah, and daun ginseng. I know those things are available in the supermarket. you can just grab and pay. however, the prices are increases and the most important is I want to have those things fresh and available instantly when I need them.

I cook the instant noodle mix with daun ginseng, thin cut of sereh, or daun jeruk... hmmm... smells good. or I cook the meatball pasta - to get rid of the smell from the ground beef I put daun jeruk, daun salam, and thin cut of sereh. it's so yummy and smells good.

to get rid of acne I crush 2 daun sirih and put it on. it really works well. and, since kaka nina and I get a lot of mimisan (nose bleeding) we have to have daun sirih ready whenever we need it.

let's go green guys!
I guess gardening is including... :)

learning english from tv

yesterday we -nina, kaka nina, and mama nina- went to kezia's birthday party. kezia is nina's classmate who is very sweet cute 'very girly' little girl. while the kids were enjoying the party, miss dora (nina's grey room teacher), mbak rika (agas mom) and I had the discussion why the kids don't want to speak english in the class. the teachers have to remind them to speak english or they just speak bahasa all the time. actually there are kids who speaks english at home with their parents including nina, nea, sean and a couple more. the rest of the kids don't speak english at home because their parents are working or busy outside the house. so they just stay in the house with their babysitters. unfortunately, these babysitters don't speak english, and the chance to speak english at school is only 3 hours a day.

in my case, because I realize my english is not perfect, I subscribe to a cable tv so my kids could expose to channels (such as playhouse disney, disney channel, discovery channel, etc) besides indonesian national tv. so every day, nina and kaka nina watch those channels. I think it works well. nina's english has improved significantly, and kaka nina's has stayed in his brain up until now. and I speak english with them almost all the time - except when I'm upset.

so tv is not always bad. it can be the source to learn something useful as long as we parents accompany and check what they watch...

disk man vs. cd player

although i-pod has dominated the market, I'm still looking for a cd player for kaka nina. so I went to carrefour - off course this is a french company so I guess the management do not teach the staff english terms :). I asked one of the staff where I could find a cd player. he got confused. he asked his colleagues, and those guys got confused too. luckily, one guy came up and understand what I mean by cd player. he said, people here called it diskman instead of cd player. well well... whatever...

'setor uang vs. deposit money' term also made me confused. I went to citibank - this is a big american financial institution so I assume the staff understand english terms but apparently they don't :) I went to the teller and I said I would like to deposit some money. the teller replied I should go to the customer service to make deposito. we both confused. so I show the slip that show 'setor uang' word. then she smiled. well, mam, you mean you would like to 'setor uang'. OMG... I don't know what will happen if one day she has to deal with a real blond lady, or a handsome guy foreigner.

so what do you learn mama nina?
I learn that the jakartans speak different kind of english. so I should be prepared :)

do I need to do senam hamil ?

I watched the news this morning about senam hamil - exercise during pregnancy. it sounds important but I never did it during my pregnancy with my 2 kids. luckily, and grateful to God, nothing happened to me during the pregnancy and during the delivery. it took me 2 hours for delivery kaka nina, and only about 15 minutes 'pushing' for delivery nina.

but I don't know what will happen with this baby. I hope everything goes well. I'm pretty nervous this time. I get used to have a good care at a private women health care in st. monica. I had to meet - believe it or not - 5 doctors during the 9 months pregnancy, and I do tons of check up every time I went to the clinic - urine test, blood test, blood pressure and weight measurement, and many more test. I felt secure and comfortable. and at about the 6th month of my pregnancy I went to St. Monica-UCLA hospital - The BirthPlace for admission so anytime I was ready for the delivery, I just went to the hospital and one of the 5 doctors I'd met would help me delivery the baby. luckily, I always got help from my favorite doctors - dr. sharon pushkin for kaka nina, and dr. charles hamrell for nina.

here in jakarta, I go to Pondok Indah hospital just 5 minutes away from our house (or 30 minutes during traffic jam!!). luckily , thanks to tante mia, I meet a good and very kind doctor - dr. Aswin Sastrowardoyo. but of course the additional treatment is different here. there's no urine test, no blood test, only basic blood pressure and weight measurement. so what I'm hoping now dr. Aswin will be available to help delivery the baby ;)

are you smarter than a 5th grader?

are you?!?

really?!?

are you sure?!?

well, we better watch the show before we can answer 'yes' or 'no'. this show is becoming one of my 'must watch' show. it's fun to watch and also becoming the time to learn things. one thing to remember... we -as adults- do not under estimate kids! many times they are smarter than us! really... I mean it. even my nina - she's 3 - has good critical thinking and good answers. so don't miss this show. we can watch it at star world asia.

are you smarter than a 5th grader?

gardening

my pregnancy is full of morning sickness this time. not like the first and the second kids. I feel tired all the time. and I don't eat properly.

today, at my 11th week, I felt great and strong so I could do gardening! my backyard look awful after so many weeks I didn't have desire to go out to my backyard. off course mang emon - the gardener - came about 2 weeks ago. but usually, I go check up and water my backyard almost everyday. and during my tour I found out a cute small - a little bit bigger than a golf ball size - beehive hidden in the puring tree; trimming the unwanted leaves; and get rid off some unwanted plants which I don't even remember the name. so I had a great exercise today!

do you have a driver, mam?

today I had the super duper funniest question ever. I picked up nina from school by myself - off course. I was a little bit late so I couldn't get the ladies driver spot. I ended up parking my car at the opposite side. it's no problem for me.

when I returned to the car with nina, these two drivers sitting at the back of a car asked me politely: "mam, do you drive the car by yourself? do you have a driver, mam?" my my my... I was super duper surprised by the question. so I smiled and replied: "well, I'm the driver... any problems?" it's their turn to be surprised by my answer.

so I laughed out loud in the car... I understand why those driver asked me... because... my car was dirty...