“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?
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.)
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.
Nindya’s quick blurbs
A month too late, but I just stumbled upon IKEA France’s Tiktok video, hinting a possible collab with Animal Crossing. Unfortunately, no further information about this other than IGN picked up this news when the video was posted.
