Just another Bali

Bali, island of paradise that has international reputation, either from its tourism or from two times terrorist attack (Bali Bombing I and II).

And what does Bali have now? Yeah, there's some progress (no more "heavy" traffic congestion) in Jl Legian in certain period (not include office hour, after hour and clubbing hour) 😜 and serious bottleneck in Jl Blambangan-Kuta that must be top priority.
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Everybody still visit Kuta beach, although (almost) every beaches in Bali (or even in the universe) are same, sand and sea. Dont forget the massage, tattoo and braid services that you MUST bargained before received it. If you dont want it, just say no, and they'll leave you alone.
Kuta is quite clean, friendly and its very Bali. Some officer clean it every morning, picked all those trashes. Kuta beach is better to visit in dusk or dawn. Many dogs are seen on beach, some moslem visitor may uncomfortable with them.

Hotel: I stayed in Swiss-Belhotel Kuta or Bali Kuta Resort, room is huge! With separated living room and bedroom :)
Coz hotels layout is rectangular, to stay here I recommend you to have pool view rather than outside view (depends on your taste). Img.

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Cozy room, but lack of hotel slippers, bad water drainage on shower and unfortunately my room has other guest, ants! I'v told the receptionist and they suggest me to tell it earlier for room service to clean them up. I think the ants has nest near my room or somewhere.

Shopping:
Shopping become core of Bali's tourism (if you know what i mean), and there are many places worth for shopping, like Joger or Krisna. Joger has only three branches and recently it sells common things that you can found in street vendors.

Krisna, most famous shopping destination has many branches surrounding Kuta area! Well done bli, well done.

As far as I observed, most shopping places are visited by local tourist! (Are foreigners wake up late??)

I saw some chinese and middle east tourist but not many.
For those who are in rush catch up flight, I recommend to visit Krisna. They have (almost) all type if souvenir sell in Bali.

Tourist attraction:
Natural landscapes, art performances or educational places, and what else can we see in Bali?
Just sit there, relax, enjoy the view without rushing here and there, annoyingly taking pictures as most tourist did.

GWK is still the same, the head and body of Wisnu still separated from his Garuda and his hand, and people still visited it. Some drivers said that Dreamland beach is the new happening place worth to visit, but had no time, I visited most mainstream tourist visit.

Though I visited Bali more than three times, Bali still not disappointing, Bali never lost it's charm.

Foods and beverages that must be tried when you visit, Australia

Most (but not many) travellers demand to enjoy local specialty like food or beverage when they visited a region, village, city or even a country.

This time is Australia.

Its quite hard to find local flavour there coz Australia is a "salad", a mixed country consist of many culture and races so the people (or restaurant) tend to bring culinary flavour from their origin, luckily i found two traditional beverages and two traditional foods there.

The first two beverages is Bundaberg Ginger Beer and Solo soda. Ginger beer actually just a soda with ginger taste, better to serve chilled ;)

Solo soda is one of the traditional pub non-alcohol beverage, taste almost similar to Sprite, but i think Solo is has stronger lemon taste.

The first food must be tried is Vegemite, this authentic Australian spread or jam made from fermented barley which is side product of beer making. Taste like cheese (a bit) but it wont make you drunk anyway.
Some said that if you ate Vegemite, it will fluent your english and has australian accent :p

The second food must tried in Australia is Kangaroo steak! Yep, Kangaroo!
I recommend you to buy it in local supermarket like Coles or Woolworths than order it in steak house/restaurant (in case it will cost higher). In Coles 0.5kg Kangaroo steak costs around A$11, already marinated.
The meat is solid dark red, not marbling like wagyu or other beef cut.
The taste depends on the seasoning/marinating ingredients.
To grill it, dont make it well done, but try to make it medium/half to avoid it become hard.
Taste? Delicious! :q

Akhir Pekan

Bertemu sabtu itu seru,
Ia menyapa dengan manis,
seolah tahu bahwa aku perlu liburan setelah stress berat senin hingga jumat.
"ayo bagus, mari kita bersenang-senang, nonton film, jalan-jalan, makan-makan, bermalas-malasan seeeeepuasnya... Semuanya boleh!"
Aaaah Ia tahu aku cinta hari sabtu, padahal aku lahir dihari rabu.

Malam minggupun tiba,
Aku merasa memasuki pertapaan panjang, sebuah penghayatan akan indahnya akhir pekan... Akhir pekan yang tak kan kusia-siakan tiap momennya.

Ketika sampai dihari minggu,
the fun is still in the air! Bersenang-senang, sepuasnya, segila-gilanya!

Ketika senja pun tiba,
😳
Terasa sedih dan sendu
Ku tau hal ini pasti datang...

Why people put saturday and sunday too close, while they put monday and friday so far .__.

Failure

Nobody likes failure, but maybe somebody likes to laugh at us when we failed (maybe, but figure out how very negative-thinking I am).
But thats about somebody else, what about ourself?

Nobody likes failure.

Approved, achieved, passed, accomplished and succeed are words that required us to be perfect on doing/implementing our assignment/task. But what happened when we failed?

Having failure feels like somebody pointed a gun to your face, and you feel helpless....

Anger,
sad,
confusion,
denial, hopeless and many negative and desperate emotional words we can mentioned. World felt like torn apart, crushed, no favorite songs can cure the pain :(

Its hard, very hard some said.

Negative emotion is overwhelmed, and suspicion is around (see the word at the opening, that even I thought that somebody out there is happy with my failure!!).
What a toxic mind!

And the process continue to analyze what's wrong with it. I think there's two aspect that we can put the blame is, internally mine and external factor.

Internal factor is about what's wrong with us:
Did I well-prepared for this task?
What effort has I've done to achieve it?

External factor is about outside factor that may caused failure, anything can be the cause, mythical, irrational, coincidence or rational-logical reasons can be made, but I prefer to make things simple.

Dont compare yourself to other,
Everybody is unique, even twins are unidentic. So nobody has the same skills or intelligent level to other.

This is the best that I can do,
Remember those effort that you've put so hard, very hard to finished it.

Grateful for what you've achieve,
Yeah, there's always comparison between A and B etc, but still be grateful for any kind of small things that you've achieved today. Health and being surrounded by family and friends are small things that might be missed from our eye sight.

I just read a blog from Dondi Hananto, about capital for enterpreneur. See the notes here: http://www.dondihananto.com/. In the encore, he wrote in Bahasa Indonesia and I summarize it in English: "don't blame yourself or external factor, but focused on the solution of the problem"

I read that and WOW! He's god damn right.
myself, somebody or anything can be blamed, but it wont change the previous result. So its better to take the responsibility, not to blame somebody or the situation and start focused on the solution, how to solve/re-encounter/change the situation/problem!

Like Incubus said: "Just a phase, and it soon be over"

Menggigil di Melbourne

Hawa dingin
Perlahan,
Merayap,
Mengendap,
Mengalir, membungkus tubuh,
Membekukan sendi, mematirasakan jari-jari,
Membekukan bibir,
Membekukan setiap tarikan nafas,
Dingin, menusuk kulit menghujam tulang.

Butir air terasa seperti jarum,

Mengigil,
Gemeretak sekujur tubuh,
Semakin ku berlari, semakin kuat hujaman jarum-jarum beku ini,

Kemana ku harus pergi?
Dimanakah sumber kehangatan itu?
Dimana?

NIkwax Waterproof Spray

Winter is coming to Melbourne, because there is no snow in Melbourne, except in certain mountain region such Mt Buller etc that means there going to be a heavy rain. I decided to buy a waterproof spray. So I went to a sky equipment store in Surrey Hills and the salesperson recommend me Nikwax. A waterproof water-based repellent cost A$30. 

One of the annoying thing is that the bootle color is purple and there is a "purple" word stated on the label as well. But I want to applied in my brown-summer jacket. I remember I asked about this to the salesperson but I dont remember what the answer he gave to me. So I decided to open the bottle although there might be warranty broken, and see the solution's color looks like, it is clear -__-

Why should they stated "purple" in fact that the solution is clear colored?

Nikwax also has website to help customer seek infos about their product, unfortunately not about the "purple" thing on the label. But it quite helpful.

A bootle can be applied for 1-2 clothes, depends on size. The instruction is very clear stated on the bottle. So lets begin the work.

Because its a waterproof spray, you should expect smell things after applied the spray on fabric, so prefer to do it in well circulated areas or even outdoor. Just spray part by part and repeated again until whole fabric is covered.

But the sprinkler on Nikwax that I've used is not very good, the spray is not well diffused as fog/mist, it more like stream divided into two direction. Yeah, bad sprinkler, should manage bout it. So I apply the spray randomly but still measure the spray coverage on my jacket. Front, back, arms and collar side.

Make sure you clean any excessive product on fabric.

The result is great, I've tested it by drop a drop of water and the water wont permeate through garment. But the real test is when I take a walk on a rainy day with the jacket....

The spray in only applicable in outside of a garment, if you need a inside-out waterproof spray Nikwax has the solution (like a detergent) product. Because the product is water based waterproof spray, it approximate that the solution will diminished when garment is washed more than 3-5 times.

Thats my experience when bought a Nikwax spray, hope its useful :)

Starbucks price in four countries

This time, fun writing. No more serious stuff :p

As coffee addict, who doesn't know Starbucks? The famous coffee chain in the world. 

So what's the special thing about Starbucks that I want to write today is about the price. I've been to three countries and I want to compare prices in Indonesia, Germany and Australia.

In Indonesia, the small/short cup of Caramel Frappuccino cost Rp. 34,000 or A$ 3.6, while in Australia it cost  A$ 5.3! On the other hand, a Tall Caramel Frappuccino in Berlin cost 3.90 Euro or A$ 4.9!

Here is some hint for what size is Starbucks cups has: 

Short - 8oz
Tall - 12oz
Grande - 16oz
Venti - 20oz

What I've bought in Berlin was Caramel Frappuccino in Tall size, as shown in this receipt.

So lets summarise the result on a table.

No.	Country	SBUX size	Price (AUD)
1.	Indonesia	Short	3.6
2.	Australia	Short	5.3
3.	Germany	Tall	4.9
4.	Japan	Short	5.2

The Japanese's Starbucks price was contributed from a friend that previously visited there, she said that the Short caramel Frappuccino cost Y 420 or A$ 5.2.

Well, the not-so-surprising data is that Starbucks coffee price is relatively low in developing country such Indonesia. But in developed countries as shown on table above it is quite surprising that Starbucks price is relative cheaper in Germany than in Australia and Japan!

I think I want to drink a coffee, not iced-coffee, but a hot black coffee from my kitchen :q

Happy sipping folks!