coriander in pho

not a food blog

Trying out some eco-friendly products

September 12, 2020 10:52 am

Recently, I’ve been having this issue with my body odor and hair loss — my apologies if this is TMI ? I’m REALLY self-conscious about my body odor, and that’s the reason why you might see me slightly hunched whenever I’m in the crowd (which resulted with bad posture.)

I tried some brands, and it usually went pretty great for the first couple of months then womp-womp the next. Then, I saw some IG ads about deodorant creams. These products usually presented as organic, environmentally-friendly, aluminum-free, sustainable product.

I personally have lukewarm feelings about organic and sustainable lifestyle. Please don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the idea (although I feel organic products tend to be really expensive ?) but I don’t think I’m a good suit for the lifestyle. It takes commitment for that, and I feel that I’m way too “sinful” (???? I can’t find the proper word for it) to have organic and sustainable lifestyle (I’m still using plastic bags and cotton pads and tissue paper I’M SO SORRY.)

ANYWAY. So there’s this organic and sustainable lifestyle-store nearby my place: The Hive. They have been around in my area for quite some time, but last Tuesday would be the very first time I entered the store.

You can see lots of jars and bottles there. They sell things in bulk and you can ask the store staff to weigh the products and package it for you — and it’s encouraged for you to bring your own containers for the product. Other than environmentally-friendly products (yep, metal straws and lunchboxes are there,) they also sell food stuffs such as peanuts, legumes, lentils, and even flour. I think they also sell eco-friendly honey and chocolates? I need to check later on.

I’m actually pretty hyped to see almonds on the store. The pre-packaged almonds that usually widely available on minimarkets are the ones with flavors. I’m actually okay with that, but I found myself the salt and the sugar are bit too much (since I changed my eating pattern, I found my tolerance to sugar and salt changed too. More on that on another blog post.) So to find something still “raw”/unseasoned is pretty nifty. I can add the seasonings based on my preferences.

I chatted with the store staff about deodorant and soap bar products. I’ve been curious about soap bars (watching TikTok videos of soap bar makers cutting their soap starting to rub off on you) and so far, I never had any success with comercially-available soap bar. It’s always too dry and makes my skin itchy.

The store staff suggested me to use their organic product; they mentioned that some of the ingredients are coming from Europe but the products are produced locally in Malaysia. Now this, is actually one of my concerns about these organic eco-friendly products. How actually eco-friendly are they? Some brands are boasting how their ingredients are coming from other countries while the country that they are located might have the ingredients available.

But I’m trying to take this with grain of salt. In some cases, it’s cheaper — and more eco-friendly! — for us to import products/ingredients than trying to produce it locally.

(I think I better stop now before it starts another debate.)

So the store staff suggested me this product.

The deodorant cream is not an anti-perspirant, so you can still see sweat. But honestly, for me, that’s normal. I mean, hey, perspiration. We humans need to get rid of excess water and toxins out from our body, not forgetting the fact that it’s our body’s way to cool down our temperature. That’s the whole point of perspiration.

But so far, I’m pretty impressed! My body odor going super weird when I got stressed, and with my line of work, stress is daily-basis. I’ve tried it for 2 days and I’m so happy with the result. The deodorant’s scent is bit peppermint and herbal-y.

Speaking about stress, I also bought this because I’m a sucker for well-being products.

“Concentration and serenity.” Might need to light the candle when I started to go (ノ゜Д゜)ノ︵ ┻━┻ during my day.

I also finally caved in — if you know me, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’m sold at everything. EVERYTHING — to the shampoo bar.

(The soap is already cut in half. I cut it to make it lasts longer.)

The soap’s name is ‘The Mane Event’ by Kindersoaps. I should admit, one of the reasons why I wanted to try shampoo bar is because of Milanonna.

First time I tried it, my hair feels… Weird. It feels bit sticky/waxy, and I thought it might be because my hair is cleaned differently; and it seems I’m on the right track: Shampoo bars and the transition period.

I’m on my second wash, though, so I still can’t tell the whole differences — but so far, I’ve been liking it. The shampoo bar can be used for body and face too, so being a cheapo, I’m like, “HELL YES.” It didn’t sting the eyes too much either.

What I can see the stark difference, though, is when I use it for my face. It looks really clean, and I don’t feel the dryness/the skin being pulled-feel after my shower.

I’m not sure if this will be my entrance to organic, eco-friendly sustainable lifestyle, but if it did, I’m glad that I try some. It’s still a long way, but I hope we can start somewhere. I personally really like the idea of bringing your own shopping bag for grocery shopping and I’ve been doing that for quite some time (shout out to my sister for introducing me to the habit.)
Comfort Food

September 9, 2020 7:55 am

One day, one of my good friends texted me.

“Hey, I’m alone with my daughter at home and she has been feeling awful for the past two days due to cold. Do you have some kind of dish that you usually whipped out for your kids when they are feeling unwell? I ran out of options.”

I replied.

“Not exactly a comfort food, but I usually put ungodly amount of onions on the dish. I usually make this onion-egg fried rice. You only need rice, egg, and half the nation’s onions stock. Diced the onions whichever you like, heat the oil, put the onions in the oil — add a little bit of salt to let the water out and soften the onions — put the egg, scramble it, then put the rice.”

Anyway! I’ve been feeling quite off for the past week and culminated with annoying cold on last Sunday. Things feel bit better now, but I seriously need to get away from paracetamol for a day. So I made my breakfast with onions.

(And before anyone commented; distributed work. Viva la working from home and having onions for breakfast and wearing my UNIQLO Relaco pants with my feet on the chair while working.)

Not exactly onion-egg fried rice, but onion-egg sandwich.

I scrambled the egg afterwards because that’s how I like it. But to have it sunny-side up would be quite pleasantly aesthetically looking.

Put it on a toast. It’s not the handsomest sandwich on the block, but it’s one of the tastiest. Totally subjective.

Add it up with kaffir lime tea. I guess this is Indonesian-style tea, so you won’t taste the usual sour taste from lime. But you can smell the fragrance from kaffir lime leaves on the tea.

And that was the last teabag! Nooooo. It’s quite hard to find that brand here in Malaysia; and due to this pandemic, I can’t ask my sister to bring it here during her visit.

Anyway! What is your comfort food, and do you have specific recipes for it?
Sky-watching

September 6, 2020 10:03 pm

I just realized that I blogged more than journaling on August. Is that a good sign or…?

Anyway! Yeah, a bit late but I just checked my bullet journal book and I found I left a really good chunk of void for August 2020. I’m pretty glad this is bullet journal, though, so I can just start whenever I want. But it made me wonder what happened back on August that made me forgetting about journaling (but IIRC, I started a habit of watching sunrises and sunsets on August to calm my mind?)

(Memory intensifies with WordPress 5.5 launch, and many things afterwards.)

Oh. Yeah. That.

Anyway! About watching sunrises and sunsets. I feel this is pretty neat. Some of you might already familiar on how I call myself: A highly caffeinated anxious hamster. And with my work as an HE, things can go from zero to one hundred in matter of seconds. Plus, we are in the middle of pandemic. I hate it when I got a cold and started to wonder if this is a cold cold or a cold cold.

I’ve been following this Youtuber from South Korea named “seungahne”. Her videos would be what people called as “aesthetic” — slightly minimalist approach (think Kinfolk magazine meets Muji) and lo-fi music background. Totally my jam.

On one of her videos, she mentioned about looking at the sky seven times in a day to calm oneself down. I tried her approach, and even though I didn’t do seven times of sky-watching — I tend to forget things — I found it’s quite helpful for me. In the morning, it helps me to prepare my day. In the afternoon/evening, it helps me to disconnect my mind from my work.

Disconnecting the mind from work affairs is really important for me — and I guess, for you folks who have been working from home lately. The thing about working from home is you can’t detach yourself from work physically. There is no commute from the office to your home; no “down time” for your brain to process that you are approaching home. What kind of process you expect if the furthest distance of your work and your home is two steps away? And for some reason, looking at the sky helps me. Maybe not 100% yet, but we’ll be there.

I wanted to share her videos with you all here. I think she’s super cool and deserves more international subscribers (please turn on/activate CC (closed captioning/subtitle) button for English subtitle.)
Accent

August 30, 2020 11:28 am

Youtube channel ‘Milannonna’ is one of my favorite Youtubers; I first knew about Milannonna when I saw her Youtube video on morning routine — and I posted a little bit about it here — and I’ve been hooked ever since. From what I see, it seems like she moved back to South Korea from Italy when Covid-19 hits. Back when she was in Milan, her videos mainly on personal life, vlog-type, and beautiful sceneries of Italy. Now that she’s in Korea, it seems like she also gained more media exposure and she interviewed prominent figures; from His Excellency the ambassador of Italy for South Korea to a famous soprano singer: Hye-sang Park.

I really like the interview with miss Park for many reasons. One of them is something that’s dear to my heart: Your identity on global world.

I was born and raised in a really small town in Central Java, Indonesia called Cilacap. It’s hard to find it on the map — especially for folks who thought Indonesia is Bali and Bali is Indonesia — and even fellow Indonesians themselves have quite hard time on pinpoint exactly where the town is. The town’s name: Cilacap, usually throw people off. Towns with prefix “Ci-“ usually towns on West Java/Sundanese area, because “ci-“ on Sundanese usually means “river”. So a town with “ci-“ usually indicates river nearby the town. (Sundanese is one of the, uhhh, hundreds? Thousands? Of Indonesian’s traditional languages and dialects.)

Here’s a map if you are curious where it is (and consecutive zoomed-in maps):

Another fun fact: Right across Cilacap, there’s an island named “Nusa Kambangan Island”. This island is a jail island — an island reserved for dangerous criminals. Some said, the island is Indonesia’s version of Alcatraz.

Coming from a small town in Central Java made me growing up with a really thick Javanese accents — and this is something that I feel ashamed for a really long time.

When I moved to Jakarta for college, my accent was the thorn on my daily life. I got ridiculed constantly, one even told me to, “clean my house because you sound like my maid.” And remember, this happened between Indonesians — not from different countries.

I learned to be quiet. To not speak. And to work my damn ass off.

It nearly paid; I was lecturers’ (yes, plural) pet at that time. I love to read, so I devoured case studies as if I’m obsessed. One lecturer even had to stop me from raising my hand to give others opportunities to answer — and they usually got it wrong and ended up with me answering the right answer. I was the Hermione Granger of my class.

But at what cost? I changed my accent, up to a point people thought I’m from Bandung, a major city in West Java — unlike Javanese accent that I had, people thought my broken Javanese accent which somehow, they thought, sounds like Sundanese, as endearing. It actually shows how clueless people can be.

I tried to refuse my identity of a small-town thick-accent girl, but does it worth it? Couldn’t I answer my lecturer’s questions flawlessly with a goddamn accent? And why not?

You can take a girl out of kampung, but you can’t take kampung out of a girl.

And I never been more proud of that fact — of me getting rid of my accent, until I met my friend. He’s from the UK, and once we chatted about accents and how it shows where you come from. “In general, people thought English accent is posh. They haven’t heard the accent from other towns, then,” as he laughed.

“Well, I’m ashamed of my accent. Your English accent is considered as awesome here.”

“Really? How so? Why are you ashamed of your accent?”

“People make fun of it.”

“Huh. Hm. I can understand that. It would be easier for me to say that you can ignore them, but it usually cuts deeper than that.

But I really hope you won’t forget that. It’s a shame, though, for people to mock your accent. We shouldn’t do that. Accent shows you where you come from, and that’s you.”

So I decided to make peace with myself. Specifically, with my accent. It’s hard, though. I mean, I’ve grown super self-conscious about it, so to actually accepting it 100% would be a journey — and I’m still learning about it now.

But I guess I did good, though. Speaking about Indonesian (Javanese) batik, using my English (maybe with accent? I’m too scared to watch the recording. I’m still too self-conscious), during Automattic Grand Meetup 2019. Maaaaybe not as huge as international conference, but Automattic? A company with Automatticians from all over the world? Close enough ?

Picture taken by Eric. Thanks, Eric!

And I know that this goes without saying, but you know, this words:

“Those who mind won’t matter, those who matter won’t mind”?

Yeah, that.

You are you. You have you — the whole package. Your culture, your language, your accent, your heritage, your food, your everything. With the risk of a millennial trying to sound Gen Z-ish: Haters gonna hate. You will always have somebody who mock you, and that’s not going to be easy. You will find yourself questioning yourself and your self-worth from a goddamn accent. Some days, you can bounce back and spew expletives to those haters with the loudest “JANCOK!” (the East Javanese are really good in sharing bad words); some days, you might find hating yourself. That’s okay. That’s normal.

You will find friends along the way. Those who won’t mind at all.
Budgeting v. Spending Tracker

August 23, 2020 9:13 pm

This is more a question rather than a financial tip. I actually wanted to ask you all here, if you have any tips or budgeting/spending format that you have been following — and if yes, please do share! Even if you don’t have any, feel free to let me know why. Maybe, unconsciously, you have certain system that works.

So! Yeah, I guess it goes without saying that financial management is something that we learnt — and actually need to learn — since young age. Pocket money or maybe salary from part-time/summer break gigs; we learned how to ensure we don’t overspent. And when we did (stress eating and stress buying is real yo,) we can make sure that it’s still within manageable level.

I’ve been using spending tracker for years. I’m using Money Lover app on my phone to track my spending and… As much as I love and appreciate the app, I really am too lazy to track each transaction every single day!

I guess it goes down with the pros and cons of daily spending tracker:

Pros:

You are handling your financials in detailed manners. You know where goes which and which goes where.

Cons:

You need an immaculate set of discipline, something that I clearly lack of. And if are not super careful, you can go overboard with your spendings and overspend.

Now, I’m interested with budgeting. So I’m planning — well, I already planned — some “posts” for each costs/spendings. For some spendings that usually go into variable cost (constantly changing — for example, electricity bill. Quite contrary with Indonesia, we still have post-payment method (you got billed based on your consumption — whereas in Indonesia, you can purchase “electricity tokens/credits” with certain amount of fee. It’s to avoid overcharging issues) by the electricity company) I “force” it to be fixed cost. I’m checking the average billings and set certain amount of money that I will pay monthly. So far, I always have extra fees on my account, which helped alleviating the billings.

Of course, this kind of thing — forcing variable costs to turn into fixed cost — comes as I have privileges and means to do that.

It’s pretty eye-opening to see the amounts and the priorities. What I like about budget method is, you started to think how to save more or reduce the cost. I feel this will be super useful if you have future planning and you are foreseeing the possible costs.

Budget method calls for envelope method. So you use literal envelope and put the allocated money inside each envelope. You took it out for every spending that you have, and if the envelope is empty, then you stop.

Now, since we are using cashless method more frequently — and due to the pandemic, it’s encouraged to use cashless method to reduce contact — I’m currently thinking what kind of “envelope” method I can use. Money Lover app has this feature where you can create “wallets” on your account, and it looks neat to use it as envelope. I also planning to cross-check it with my spreadsheet.

Pros:

You can get bird-eye view of your expenses and your priorities. In some cases, it can even be a wake-up call to save more.

Cons:

If not done properly, it might lead to overspending — which beats the initial goal of budgeting. And on some cases, it can be really depressing. You need to look at your incomes, your expenses, and your cashflow. Some folks are fortunate enough to see how to get by. For some, it might be quite hard to do so.

Sooooo… What I’m thinking is, maybe I can combine those two (?) Every month, I create the monthly budget. Then, for specific “envelope”, I’m using spending tracker ? I’m thinking I can use spending tracker on my personal expenses since that can easily goes overboard.

I honestly don’t know how this (managing one’s budget) will work with some of us in sandwich generations. I have been hearing personal stories where it’s really really hard for my generations to have savings since they need to take care their family and they need to take care of their parents. There are also economical issues, workforce issues, and many external factors that makes people really reluctant to look at their financial conditions. Some folks even living paycheck to paycheck, and having savings is considered a luxury.

How about you? Do you have specific methods on handling your budget? Feel free to share!

Quick blurbs

Saw this site mentioned the other day on Slack: neocities.org.

Scroll down and you will see “Featured Sites”. Never knew it brings back early 2000s, and it makes me so, so happy.

April 23, 2026