coriander in pho

not a food blog

  • Dust

    Alright. I’m going to try to blog on daily basis starting today. If I can write my thoughts regularly on Kakao Story, why couldn’t I do the same here.

    I once mentioned in passing about how some nights I feel “crawlies” on my legs which caused me unable to sleep. Weeks later, Ari followed suit. He complained of itchiness which woke him up late at night, scratching all over his legs. Before you asked, yes, I considered the possibility of bed bugs or even worse: Lice.

    Then again, I am so sure no such bugs appeared and visible on the house.

    Why?

    First, I got myself mattress cleaning service. I asked the cleaner if they see any bugs, and they confirmed they didn’t see anything. Other than mattress dusts, which is expected, they didn’t notice anything out of ordinary.

    Second, the kids behaving normally. No sudden itchiness or any concerns. Bed bugs and lice spread really really fast, yet both Wira and Rey didn’t have any complaints at all. Furthermore, these two tend to camp on the parents’ bedroom (master bedroom) and they seemingly unaffected by the whole thing. The only thing I can think of is the bugs are actually discriminatory in terms of age. “Young kids? Ptooey!”

    This made us questioning ourselves. Why, then, only Ari and I who got late-night itchiness?

    We have this… air purifier + dust filter from Coway that we rent. Coway is a company from South Korea specializing in wellness products: water filters, air purifier, even mattress. They didn’t sell their product. They rent it instead. They have customer service team that will come to the client’s house once every several months to do regular checking and maintenance. If I’m not mistaken, the client will have the full right of the products after certain number of years.

    Right. So. It was 10 PM when Ari decided to haul the air purifier from the living room to our bedroom. After a bit of squeezed in due to the room size, we activated the filter.

    The filter has this… light indicator. Blue as the “purest”/the cleanest and red as the dirtiest/the room is filled with dust particles, along with the number indicator of dust particles. On the living room, the filter usually showing number 1 — a really really low number of dust particle.

    As soon as we powered on the air purifier, the machine hummed loudly and the indicator jumped right into red status with number nearing 90-100. It took… I don’t know, 3 hours? Until the indicator whirred down.

    At least we know now it was not bugs. It was dust allergy.

    Moral of the story, folks: Reminder to dust off your bed and deep clean your house regularly.

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  • Second vaccination for the kids

    Last week (? Wait. 2 weeks ago?) the kids got their second vaccination.

    I always thought having bigger kids vaccinated was easier. I mean, have you heard babies got their shot?

    Oh how wrong I was.

    Babies are actually pretty easy. They didn’t know what a gosh dang syringe is. The only thing they know is who is this stranger talking to my parents and why they are looking at me intently and what is that OW WHAT IS THAAAAT RAAAAAAGEEEEEEE FEAR MY MINI ANGERY oh I am now comfortable again okay Imma go back to sleep.

    Especially Rey. When Rey was a toddler (1-2 years old,) it was REALLY easy to get her took her vaccinations. All you got to do is talk about food. The paediatrician once chatted about super foods, and Rey was in awe when the doctor mentioned the food: Avocados, blueberries, strawberries… The doctor pulled the syringe and the next thing we knew she emitted an, “ow!” but that’s that. The doctor continued chatted the properties of bananas and toasts and Rey was back to her imagination of enjoying buffet dinner.

    Now that the kids are bigger, I forgot both of these mini humans inherited one major trait from me:

    Dramatic tendency.

    Both Wira and Rey know perfectly well what vaccines are. They know how the virus and the pandemic change people’s lives worldwide.

    And they know, it only hurts momentarily.

    Does it stop them? No. Also, they knew the amount of stickers and candies and promises should they show a bit of fear, and how they exerted it to their own benefits.

    “I’m so scaaareeed!”

    “I know. It shouldn’t take long. It should take 10 seconds max.”

    “I heard other kids crying!”

    “Yes. They are feeling nervous too. And that’s okay.”

    “… … … Can we get stickers and candies after this?”

    A little voice quipped. “CAN WE GO TO FAMILY MART SO WE CAN BUY ODEN AND ONIGIRI?”

    And they knew, their parents can’t refused it.

    The pic was taken when they just climbed up into the car, clutching stickers. They managed to finish the house’s banana stock for a week and Rey decided to treat herself to five bottles of Yakult in one sitting.

    And no, no side-effects. If any, they becoming more annoying on asking when dinner is ready.

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  • Sunny afternoon

    It’s Saturday and the whole family is lazying around the house — except Ari who is doing his homework for his master degree. I just finished watering the plant when I felt a nice warm afternoon sun. Please note, it was scorching hot a couple of hours before.

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  • Coincidences

    For months, our apartment buildings have been terrorized by package thieves. Plural, because we caught one once. His bold attempt got caught on camera, and security managed to track down the car plate and blocked access. Things went peaceful for some months until new reports of missing parcels pouring in again.

    Here’s the thing about the process of receiving package in our apartment building; before the pandemic, it was pretty normal for couriers to go up to the respective units and send their deliveries. When the person is not at home, couriers can just leave the package on the doorstep — and security-wise, most home owners put CCTV on the front door.

    When the pandemic hits, a new SOP (one among many others) got implemented across apartments and high-rise estates. All package receivers — be it food delivery, package delivery, anything — should receive their packages at the lobby area. This to ensure minimum movements and reduce contacts.

    This is when the problem started. This caused couriers to: 1. Wait for the package receiver to come down to the lobby, causing them losing precious minutes of delivery, and 2. Additional work when the package receiver is not at home. Couriers end up putting the packages on the mail room (an area that actually strictly for mail/letters only) and hoping the package receiver able to receive the package properly.

    It was like a gambling. Some folks are lucky enough to be able to get their packages in good conditions. Some, not so. The neighbourhood has been reaching out to the apartment’s building management for security enhancement and possibility of putting CCTV facing the mail room, but it seems like every attempt was futile.

    Until this afternoon, at 6 PM. I just came back from our apartment’s garden with Rey when we saw a slight commotion on the lobby area.

    I didn’t think too much about it. It was Saturday afternoon, folks usually out and about. Some neighbours can be seen waiting for their food delivery to arrive.

    I checked our apartment Telegram group, in case anyone knows what was that about (yes, we are gossip-y like that,) when a new message appeared: “The parcel thief finally got caught!”

    The group exploded.

    “YOOOOO. THOSE GROUP ON THE LOBBY JUST NOW? IT WAS THE PARCEL THIEF?”

    “DID ANYONE GOT THE PIC?”

    “PIC OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.”

    “CAN SOMEONE KICK THE THIEF FOR ME? PRETTY PLEASE?”

    We then found out the police even involved and thanks to them, the building management and the police managed to nab the thief. At that point, we were so confused; how could it be we have the police force ready on our premises? Did anyone file a report, and the police actually took missing parcel cases seriously?

    Apparently, the police was in the area for another case. There was a burglary case on a store nearby our building, and the police narrowed down the search and found out the suspect’s car was seen regularly entering and exiting our apartment area.

    The police force met with the building management, and they were in the middle of checking the CCTV when they realized something was really off about this person who entered the building empty-handed, yet he came out with packages. The rest, then, a history.

    (Anyway, the police managed to catch the burglars too!)

    Update: I need to update this post by saying the security guards are doing awesome job too! One of the guards noticed the car has been super sus (“he came to the building this morning and again in the afternoon? A courier usually comes once”) and he chased the car around the block, using motoped. He raised the flag as soon as he recognized the police and caught the thief.

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  • Yogyakarta

    I was doing my usual mindless scrolling on Twitter when I saw KLa Project’s tweet about their song “Yogyakarta”.

    KLa Project is one of the seniors in Indonesia music industry. Their songs and albums holding legendary status among Indonesians.

    One of their songs is “Yogyakarta”. Yogyakarta is a special district/area in Indonesia, and Indonesians usually associate Yogyakarta with “memories”; from fond memories to bittersweet ones. Apart from being a district, Yogyakarta is actually a city too, and the city is the topic of the song. Yogyakarta is special in many senses. It still upholds the traditions while the city keeps moving through urban development here and there. In its own ways, Yogyakarta holds mythical feelings of fleeting moments.

    For Indonesiamatticians, this song is memorable. We sang this song one morning, one of those days during the company’s latest Grand Meetup in Florida, back in 2019. There were only a handful of us at that time in Automattic. There were only five Indonesians, me included, in Automattic. We are a tight-knit group, thick as thieves. We promised to sing this song again when we meet on the next Grand Meetup — then, you know, pandemic and all that. Now, whenever one of us mentioned this song, it always replied with groans and some frustrated text, “DANGIT WHEN THIS PANDEMIC GONNA END.”

    We were jetlagged, it was 5.30 AM in the morning, none of us had our coffee or tea yet, some even haven’t slept since the night before, I woke up with barrage of messages on the Telegram group “OI! WAKE UP! WE ARE HAVING JAM SESSION!” and one of us, Eric, struck a chord followed by impromptu singing by Hafiz. Akeda and Ezra followed with guitar and bass.

    For 4 minutes, “Yogyakarta” was heard in Florida, United States, sang by a bunch of sleep-deprived Indonesians. For 4 minutes, it became a memory.

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