coriander in pho

Bahas Buku: “The Maid” oleh Nita Prose

April 28, 2025 6:48 pm

Akhir-akhir ini, selera saya sedang bergeser ke murder mystery. Ya sebenernya memang ini genre favorit sih, tapi rasa-rasanya makin banyak seri murder mystery di luar sana, dan saya sama sekali ga keberatan, hahah. BTW, tulisan Bahas Buku ini saya copy-paste dari feed Threads saya. Saya juga sekarang memutuskan untuk menyebutnya “Bahas Buku” ketimbang “Review” karena… Saya nggak tau gimana cara review buku. “Review” buku ala saya adalah, “ini buku bikin gw nangis sampe jongkok dan asam lambung naik. 100/100 recommended.” Mengingat review saya lebih mirip celetukan ketimbang review beneran, jadi lebih baik nulisnya ya ngebahas aja dari perspektif pribadi saya ya.

Ini salah satu buku yang terakhir saya selesaikan. Genre murder mystery-cozy mystery, judul “The Maid” oleh Nita Prose.

Saat baca blurb-nya, saya sempet keinget sama potongan adegan cerita murder mystery juga (Agatha Christie?) yang intinya, “nggak ada yang merhatiin pekerja di hotel. Mereka bebas keluar masuk tanpa menarik perhatian.”

Saya sendiri suka dengan karakter-karakter yang kurang menonjol. Bukan yang wow banget, tipe “kamulah Yang Terpilih”/The Chosen One. Karakter yang seperti orang-orang yang kita temuin di jalan, angkot, bis. Dan novel ini bercerita tentang seorang staf housekeeping di sebuah hotel butik — yang ga sengaja terlibat kasus.

Yang berkesan buat saya adalah karakter utama. Ini gambaran kasar ya: Rasanya seperti membaca “Forrest Gump” dengan setting housekeeping hotel. Si karakter, Molly, bisa dilihat sebagai karakter neurodivergent. Ini yang saya kagum dari penulisnya: Nggak perlu ditulis gamblang, tapi dari pembawaan Molly, pembaca tau kalo dia neurodivergent.

Untuk yang suka novel dengan penuh aksi dan kejar-kejaran waktu (misal, karya-karyanya Dan Brown,) MUNGKIN novel ini bukan novel yang cocok (kecuali kalo lagi nyari tema baru ya 😄) Novel ini fokusnya berat di… Bersih-bersih. Saya suka beberes, jadi happy betul saya baca rutinitas Molly beberes kamar-kamar hotel, hahahahah. Baca ini jadi pengen ikut beberes juga.

“The Maid” ini berseri. “The Maid”, “The Mystery Guest” (ini juga bagus!), dan “The Mistletoe Mystery”. Tahun ini kabarnya akan rilis “The Maid’s Secret” — ini udah, BTW. Kemarin jalan-jalan di Suria KLCC dan melewati Kinokuniya, ngeliat buku ini satu tampak di etalase.

Saya sempet liat komentarnya si penulis, Nita Prose, mengenai motivasi dia nulis ini. Dia cerita kalo satu hari, dia masuk ke kamar hotel dia karena kelupaan barang. Pas masuk kamar, dia dan staf housekeeping sama-sama kaget karena dia ga nyangka staf udah di situ dan staf juga kaget dia mendadak nongol 😆 Dari situ dia berpikir, “staf hotel ini pasti tau banyak soal saya, dari barang-barang dan sampah saya. Tapi, apakah saya pernah meluangkan waktu untuk tahu siapa mereka?”

Karena itu lah dia nulis novel dengan karakter staf housekeeping hotel, menggambarkan mereka lebih dari hanya “seorang staf housekeeping”, tapi juga hidup sehari-hari mereka. Temen-temen yang suka ngobrol sama staf, penjual makanan keliling, tukang parkir, dll, mungkin akan tertarik dengan novel ini 😄
Being 40 and 2025

April 28, 2025 11:23 am

My birthday already passed (December), but I just got my motivation and willingness to blog now. As… snappy as this sounds, opening the post editor on my laptop reminded me too much of (previous) work. When I had my sabbatical, I didn’t touch any of my sites for 3 months — hence, perhaps this was the same case as before.

I ended my 2024, and continuing it in 2025, with a driving lesson. I can’t drive to save my life, and I started to feel that driving is one of the must-have life skills. Here in Malaysia, you will need to sign up for driving lessons for your driving license. There are, at least, three types of driving licenses — which feels like a power-up item, hahah. After you attended the theory class (6 hours of theory class), you need to attend the computer examination (theory exam). Should you pass the exam, you will get an L driving license: Learner. An L-license holder can only drive a car with a certified driving lesson trainer assisting them, no other passengers, and the car should have a big “L” sticker to indicate that the driver is a learner.

During L-license lessons, you will have the hands-on experience of driving a car — in the training circuit and on the road. The lessons take 16 hours in total.

After the hands-on training, you will need to face another exam (practical exam). During this exam, you will have a staff from JPJ (Jawatan Pengangkutan Jalanraya — Road Transport Department) as an examiner. Once you passed the exam, you are entitled to P-license (Probationary drivers) and the license applies for 2 years. Only after you finished 2 years with the P-license, you leveled up to be the Final Form: D-license (Completed Driving License).

I’m still on my L-license form and have yet to evolve. I must say, the lessons can be tricky and now I know why driving is considered an art and experience-based! Wish me luck, everyone! I’m having my (repeat) driving exam next Monday.

Now, speaking about 2025. I know that talking, or writing, about the new year can be so passe. It feels like after what happened in 2020, people started to be more… calmer, in building and working on their resolutions. We had, like, 2-3 years with “staying alive” as one of the main resolutions after all.

That said, I don’t have any current goals/ambitions for this year. I mentioned this in a couple of past posts: I have an immense amount of privilege, which allowed me to say things that I am saying here.

I actually wondered if I should just switch to Indonesian language here. I know that nobody’s stopping me, this is my blog anyway. So perhaps, that’s what I’m going to do: Switching to Indonesian on this blog. Again, a lot of things here remind me too much of my previous work and it’s, uh, unpleasant. The recent news about the place I used to work was not super great either. I even had the thought to switch to freaking Blogger of all places, knowing full well that Google could pull the plug at any time. That said, the website host subscription is already paid up to 2028, hahah. So switch to Indonesian it is.
Borobudur

January 26, 2025 4:13 am

Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur (Indonesian: Candi Borobudur, Javanese: ꦕꦤ꧀ꦝꦶꦧꦫꦧꦸꦝꦸꦂ, Candhi Barabudhur), is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, near the city of Magelang and the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indonesia.

— Wikipedia
Incoming rain

November 21, 2024 9:21 am

In the middle of monsoon season.
Post-lunch Cardio

November 20, 2024 9:35 am

KL has been getting cooler recently, and I have enjoyed nice breeze as I opened my balcony door and let the air flows through.

I just finished my lunch yesterday when I heard a skittering sound on the ceilings. At first, I thought it was a bug or a dragonfly entered my unit from the balcony (a common occurrence), but I realized the sound was too loud for a bug. I put my attention away from episode 2 “Seoul Busters” and looked for the sound source — and there it was, a small bird perched on my ceiling lamp.

The bird was panicking, which, understandable. Imagine yourself as Jack, and you stumbled into a giant troll’s house after climbing a humongous beanstalk that happened to grow in your backyard overnight.

I tried to call the bird with an attempt that can be said as “whistling”, although it was more like a “blowing air and making squeaking noises.” The bird, might be offended because I might insulted them in bird language, fluttered to the guest room. Then, the chase started.

I closed the door so it was only me and the bird in a standoff. The bird scurried between the air conditioner unit and the curtains. I did open the windows, but the window panes are too low for the bird to realize that they could fly out from there (fun fact: Happens a lot, too, with bugs and anything that breathing and flying.)

At that point, my strategy was to tire the bird out so they will fly lower. I went back and forth, chased the bird, from one side to another. Cue Lil Jon & East Side Boyz’s “Get Low”.

To the windooooowwwww to the wall.

We need to put “bird chasing” as part of cardio because whew.

After an eternity (20 minutes), the bird started to getting tired. I noticed they flew lower, so I grabbed my foldable laundry basket and trapped them. I pulled my son’s shirt from the school event of “Fun Run” (“fun” and “run” should not be in the same sentence) and grabbed the poor terrified little friend.

The bird chirped loudly, emitted a protest. I muttered a mix of apologies (“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry”) and my mother instinct of scolding (“ha! See?! I told you! I told you it’s dangerous! You still do it! See?? Ah, do it more then! Do it more!”) while I ran back to the balcony and set the bird free. They flew immediately after, to my relief.

Also, I found some mushrooms on my wooden table in the balcony.

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