Food and Factory Outlet Hunting Day

Last Saturday I went out of town to Bogor for Food Hunting and
shopping spree with two friends, one of whom is actually a denizen of Bogor but only stays there during weekends because of the work is in Jakarta. These two friends like to eat out at restaurant new to them.

Bogor is an hour's reach by car from Jakarta and it is known as the city of rain because the rainfall is relatively heavy there. Bogor's temperature used to be much cooler than Jakarta's, but don't expect that in current weird world weather, you'll be disappointed. Btw, if you haven't been to Bogor, then visiting Bogor Botanical Garden is A must!! It has a great collection of very big trees, various plants, and better quality of air.

We're lucky there's no rain during our visit there, though it did have rain earlier in the morning as reported by my friend's Mom.  Seems we had the mojo to stop the rain  :-D
We first visited Venus Bakery which is famous for its mini buns called Roti Unyil, then we hop to a nearby shop for Asinan Bogor (salted fruits or vegetables). Finish from there, we stuffed our stomach at Gurih 7, a Sundanese restaurant with open spaces in nature concept. The foods there are ordinary but not disappointing.

photos by:alo7

As our stomachs were tamed and our energy recharged, we went for thrifty shopping spree at Factory Outlets :)) ...but we didn't really succeed and only got one stuff for each of us from three FOs that we visited.

Went again for food hunting, and the next stop was Macaroni Panggang -roasted macaroni, where we ordered for a take away, a medium size of special  Macaroni Panggang cut into half -paid additional charge IDR 3K for cutting it; one half for me and the other for C...we're being thrifty of carbo intake :-P. The special one is the one with additional mushroom other than slices of beef. This Macaroni Panggang seems to have become one of Bogor's prides recently, and its taste does satisfy the taste buds. Hope one day I'll be able to find its original recipe, like last time I got an Original Tiramisu Recipe from my Italian teacher.

Out of MP, we went hunting at two other FOs again, and again got each of us just one stuff. Since it's almost 5pm, we took off for a street hawker seafood stall which receives a good review on one of our national newspapers -Kompas. G said the stall opens at 5pm. We ordered "Crabs in Padang Dressing", "Fried Crabs with chilli" and "Steamed Blood Cockles", and half portion of steamed rice for each of us. As we're about to finish from there, the stall was starting to be overpopulated with its visitors. I didn't find anything special about the cooking there, and I was a bit disappointed and now I have a doubt if that is really the one mentioned by Kompas.

Transportation is the Key to Freedom

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of NMEDA. All opinions are 100% mine.

We have a wheelchair at home, but since a year ago it's never been in use because Mom is strong enough to use both of her legs to walk, after a long period of hospital stays. Mom was lucky because she's always had one of us, the family and also her private nurse, acted as her caregiver, helping her moving in a wheelchair. As for driving, she is happy to be also a dependent person, even in her youth days :)

That situation is different to independent people’s who have to be bound in wheelchair because of their physical limitation, either by their disability or by their age. They need to learn from experts and qualified associates on how to claim their freedom back and how to be able to get their personalised transportation.

They need NMEDA, the only association that promotes safe driving and equipment for disabled people. NMEDA is a non-profit trade association of mobility equipment dealers, drivers rehabilitation specialists, and other professionals who make possible people with disabilities to drive or be transported in special modified vehicles that suit individual’s need, because there’s no two people with a disability are identical.

If you live in the USA or Canada, and you need useful information on how to live independently with disability, you can contact NMEDA using dealer locator just by typing in your ZIP code. All NMEDA dealers have been accredited through the Quality Assurance Program (QAP), which is the only acknowledged accreditation program for the Adaptive Mobility Equipment industry.
Goodluck :)

Duped by Potato Head No. 51A

It's no secret to most of my good friends that I have a weakness for potato. Having no other information than the only hearsay by a friend about Potato Head, I suggested Gianti to have our brunch there. It's not really a brunch though, cause it's already close to 2pm when we changed our direction from one Plaza -*read* Shopping Centre, to Pacific Place because I couldn't stop thinking about meeting some scrumptious potato jackets which I have been longing for ages.

The first impression from the outside before stepping our feet there, the cozy atmosphere was in the air already. We couldn't find the menu book that usually some restaurants place on a stand in front of the entrance, we decided to enter anyway. We wanted to pick the seat on the second floor, cause the bridge to go there looks nice and the view from above would be wider. Too bad, the smokers own that level. I asked the waiter of another part in that resto for non smokers. She pointed only the one that she recommended us to take. Strangely and sadly, less than 4 meter from our table, there was one or two men smoking, and by the confirmation from the waiter, we found out that non-smokers only have around 36 square meter as their territory, and it's physically border-less.

 

Photo by potato head

Now, the menu....and this is why the title is duped by Potato Head :)
I couldn't find the many choices of jacket potato that I was imagining before. We then learned rightaway, that the resto's name has nothing to do with the potato in its menu specifically, the menu mainly consists of various western cookery. Disappointed but hungry, I then chose Tuna Spaghetti Aglio Olio (IDR 65000) and Orange Juice (IDR 30000), and Gianti ordered something like jacket potato (around IDR 55000) but I forgot its name, I just remember she squeak a bit, telling me with disappointing voice about the egg inside of the potato that she ordered. She chose not to order a drink cause she had her bottled water, and because the drinks at Potato Head are at least IDR 20000.
 The only available water is a pricey one.

Let's jump to the taste talk...
Not sure if the waitresses and the man in duty noticed it, but it's probably thrice, I was asked whether the food was ok or was anything as expected. Gianti told me to be frank about the spaghetti was not properly cooked, so at the third time when a man in  asked me about the food, I shared my opinion nothing but the truth.....the spaghetti is hard.
Man in duty confidently tried to explain that there is a kind of texture when cooking pasta called Al dente which means it's not soft but firm, but before he could continue any longer Gianti fended by explaining the proper meaning of the term Al Dente..

Gianti: Yes I know what Al Dente is, but this is not Al Dente, this is undercooked. If only the chef gave one more minute to this spaghetti, then it would become Al Dente, just one more minute, trust me.

I couldn't help smiling, seeing Gianti telling the man in duty just like a teacher explaining thing to a student. The man in duty was then apologizing for my meal, he promised that he will tell the chef about it, and he thanked us. He still tried to get my approve of the taste, well, honestly, the taste itself was good, and he looked relieved by my answer.

Gianti knows a lot about Italian cooking because she worked with Italian company, and besides that, she proclaims herself as an avid cook who is able to taste a food or distinguish what are the spices in it just by the smell.

Final thought about the Potato Head No. 51 A....
The interior is fun and I like the using of recycled things for its decoration, but...
I wish there were more choices regarding the table for non smokers, please respect our right for a better quality of air, and puhleassee....how could flies also exist? Judging by the price of the food and beverages there and the location in a high-end Shopping Centre, the place should be fly-free zone. The waitress acknowledged those flies, but didn't provide our table any candle, yet she provided a candle to a table of some expatriates.
Perhaps she thought we Indonesians are already immune to fly..lol.
We didn't leave tip cause the resto already charges 10% for service and 10% for tax from the total order.

Google Friend Connect is Open

On 3rd December I got an email from Google Friend Connect that says "you have been whitelisted to use Google Friend Connect." To be honest I almost forgot what it is, I think I read its review from some review site for betas some time ago.

It's quite nice, Google Friend Connect provides member gadgets and social gadgets. There are two kind of member gadgets, one is merely for signing in and the other is physically looks like Mybloglog, BlogCatalog and Blogger Follower feature but with some plus. Google Friend Connect allows anyone with Google, Yahoo, AOL, and OpenID to join. Once joined, member can have their profile automatically displayed there, and clicking member's profile won't take visitor away from the site where that Google Friend Connect nests, instead it will show anything that the member put on the profile ie. 'about me', 'links', 'site I've joined'. From there member can interact with other member or even directly invite friends from member's social networks.

Social gadgets consist of some nice gadgets, and one that I also install here is Wall gadget which allows visitor to leave comment or link to video. There is also Review/ Rate gadget that allows visitors to rate books, movie, etc. Other gadgets are Open Social demonstration - I don't know what it is :-P, then Lame Game demonstration and Custom Gadget. I'm not sure about Custom Gadget, but it's similar with blogger html widget, no?

Anyhow, it seems just now as I'm writing this (I found out that) Google Friend Connect is out of beta already, means anyone can join without being first whitelisted.

So grab it, it's worth to try and it's easy to install it, and you are welcome to showcase your profile, links, etc on my GFC, let's get viral

Triggit for fun

Finally Triggit makes it clear on Getsatisfaction that Triggit is not taking commissions from the links that its users make with Triggit. That's cool.
When I signed up I didn't think at all whether or not Triggit would make money from the clicks to my ads links.

I decided to use Triggit only because it's very easy to link advertisements, Youtube videos and images from Flickr into blog or website. I read on Gigaom that Wordpress actually also has similar plugin that works similarly, linking products that are being mentioned on the blog posts directly to merchants. Well, since I'm not on Wordpress, this thing is very new to me.

Triggit doesn't need coding at all. Everything just drag and drop, after you put a snippet of Triggit code into your html. Every time I need to link a word or some words of my blog post to related merchants from Amazon or Commission Junction, I just click the Triggit red triangle icon -see on the bottom on this page-, and all is done. That simple step also works for posting photos from Flickrs or video from Youtube. Yes the photo on this post is directly transported from Flickr. This following is a test using Amazon product: I'm interested in "A Life of Jesus" a book by Shusaku Endo. Nice eh :)

Triggit is still in Beta, you must have invitation to join it. Gigaom states on one of its post last month that Triggit gives it 300 Triggit invites, just type gigaom on the invite code box.
If you miss it, don't worry, I think Triggit is generous enough, I requested the invite directly and got it quite quick.

Photo by fumi

Sharing intel with Qassia

What is Qassia?
Well, if you are just a small blogger like me and want to grow the blog or you are already big but still want to get bigger, Qassia can help by rewarding its users with backlinks, credit and revenue whenever users share intel, a short word of intelligence, which is nothing but tidbit of information aka those things that we usually write or show on blogs. Users can write anything that they like as far as the intel is in English and a non-porn article.

The quality of intel in Qassia is maintained by voting system, which means an intel can only be published or rejected after get screened by minimum of 10 users. The intel rating goes by 6 choices:
A - Outstanding
B - Good job
C - Decent enough
D - Below average
E - Awful
F - Fail [Reject]

Users also get credit or bonus by screening other's intel, a first user who rates an intel will get a bonus of $5 while the rate that goes with the majority and which turn our to be near to the final score will gives the rater $10, that all be valid when the intel get 10 users to screen it.

Qassia is also a good instrument to feed your adsense because Qassia allow users to run Google Adsense ads, and unlike many other websites who also allow sharing Google Adsense, Qassia leaves 100 percent of the adsense revenue to users.
If you like what you read about Qassia and want to join, please accept my invite on ioi.qassia.com by clicking the sign up because Qassia is currently in closed Beta and by invitation only. Thank you!!

Bye Bye Yuwie

I finally deleted my Yuwie account after joining it for a month. Yuwie is Myspace plus benefits, means members get paid if anyone views either their profile, blog pages, their friends, comments, picture pages, use their share layouts, and if members view their control panel pages. With that scheme members need nothing but a bunch of friends on their Yuwie page, so adding as much people as you can into your Yuwie and to accept all incoming friend requests is advisable.

That didn't work for me. I created a very nice Yuwie page that made me unwillingly to ruin that good looking page. I also didn't want to add anyone who has gluttonous Yuwie page. Gluttonous in the sense that the person put too many unnecessary adds-on like video news feed, mp3 player, flash thingy, etc all together. My internet connection gives me freedom to download/ upload and to be online without restriction, but still I found it very annoying when clicking a page, suddenly video news feed, youtube, mp3 player, flash thingy are on at once. I also can't stand ostentatious profile page, and I don't like blinkies or kitsch images. However, for anyone who doesn't mind at all of those mentioned, then Yuwie is a hot thing.

Photo by Lord Jim