My boy's birthday

Emir is 9 years old now.

After subuh, I went down directly to the kitchen. We would have a special breakfast for this lovely Sunday. A complete Indonesian meal.

Since I had prepared and marinated some food last night, so this morning I was not busy. Not consuming much time. At 9.00 am everybody were ready and we had yellow rice, stir fried vegetables, tahu bacem, sliced plain omelettes, fried chicken a la Jogja, and fried noodle.

After breakfast we went to the sports store. Emir needed a new bike. Then we went to Le Balcony for having a birthday cake.

Weekend a week ago

Jumat minggu lalu, jemput Dudi di kantor trus langsung ke Bkk. Nginep semalem. Anak2 dirumah saja.

Acara pesta perpisahan dengan presdir kantor Dudi. Makan malam di hotel. Baru kali ini ada perhelatan di thailand dengan suguhan yg sama sekali nggak ada babinya ??. The Mc Gratts sampai bilang, nggak perlu tanya2 kita bisa makan semuanya, sampai ke bakso2, kuahnya aman. Hah? kenapa??. Masa cuma gara2 mikiran kita, 2 keluarga. He..he... lupa, khan presdirnya orang yahu d i. Sama nggak makan babi.

Presdir ini luar biasa baik. Sebelum di thailand ini, pernah bertugas di Indo (3 thn) sebagai presdir juga. Di Thailand dah hampir 8 tahun. Sedih banget deh. Sepanjang 22 tahun terakhir ini dia selalu bertugas di asia. Semua anak2nya sampai nggak ngerasa orang amerika amat, katanya. Setelah mereka kuliah dan berkeluarga baru mereka pulang ke US of A. Sekarang bapak inipun belum kembali ke amrik sana, beliau ditugaskan ke china.

Sang istri pernah cerita padaku, kalau 2 rumahnya di amrik sana semua isinya barang2 dari indonesia, dengan kayu2 jatinya yg kokoh. Yg bangga dia deh tampaknya. Belum katanya rumah anak2nya juga. Hi..hi..gw ikutan seneng secara gw cinta kayu jati indo, the best in the world-lah. Gw kasi kenang2an buku batik terbaru karangan joop ave. Kayaknya pantas untuk mereka.

Keesokan harinya kita ke acara peluncuran mobil baru keluaran dari kantor suamiku. Foto di atas fotonya pak presdir. SUV dari Daewoo (milik GM), kecilan, disesuaikan, cocok bw negara di asia, gak kaya SUV di negaranya sana yg besar dan gagah. Yg ini gedean dikit dari mobil kantor kita minivan zafira yg diambil dari mobil jerman, opel (punya GM juga). Kenapa yah kok nggak ambil yg dari amrik sana. Keren khan. Kaya mobil kantor Dudi dulu disana GMC Yukon Denali.

Our Old friend

Hello there,

Mbak Petty and the family,

How are you all ?. We miss you so much, much, much...

This is our picture with Timo. She visited us here for the second time. We talked a lot about old times, present and plans in the future..

Hope you all doing fine. See you insya Allah.

Beth's breakfast farewell

My dear friend Beth Johnson will move out from Thailand very soon. The Johnsons will go back to the US, after been living here for almost 8 years.

She is a very good friend. I met her first time at Geeta's birthday at Geeta's house in 2004 (I just moved to Thailand couple weeks before). I was so brave but made a good decision when I came to Geeta's, she hadn't even known me yet. I invited myself !!. I knew Geeta from the only Indonesian woman in Pattaya at that time. Knowing that her friend would have a birthday party, I was just so excited !!, I wanted to meet everybody. I wanted to have friends in Thailand. Fortunately Geeta and her friends were very nice to me. They all greeted and welcomed me.

Beth and I are good friends. We always amazed with our languages. Phillippino and Bahasa have a lot of similarities. Especially when it comes to the name of the food and the numbers. One time I was so surprised when one of our friends couldn't come a party, and Beth said "ah...sayang !!". "Hah..?, what did you say ??", I asked her. She explained to me the meaning and I just laughed because it is totally same with bahasa. Exactly same pronouncation and same meaning.

I often came to her house. She likes to cook, I like her Philippino cuisine. She also likes to bake. I'm so sure that everybody will miss her red velvet cake and her lemon bar.

We often hang out together. We went to PILC's coffee mornings, friends parties, and learned to play golf !!.

Here we were at Sheraton Hotel. Had buffet breakfast together with Indri, Ita and mbak Rita.

Rine (pink top) soon joined us.

Let's eat G.U.D.E.G

Ehm.. as all my friends know, I like to cook and entartain.

Couple weeks ago.... when my pembantu, finally, got the whole young jackfruit for me (we can not find the canned young jackfruit here, which is product of thailand), I cooked gudeg, yeah...

To accompany the gudeg, I also made opor ayam, sambal goreng krecek, tahu and tempe bacem. Actually for me as an orang jawa timur, gudeg is not my favourite food, nor my husband's.

To make gudeg I needed extra, extra, super duper patience. Oh..God.. , after hours ( with the low heat ), finally the color of my gudeg went dark and it became thick and was very tasty, because all the spices had absorbed.

Emir seemed OK, though, was not very excited. Arif, yes ! , he liked my gudeg so much, and sambal goreng krecek. This was their first time to eat gudeg. How about Farah ?, emm..maybe next time I'll let her to try. She ate the opor ayam, her favourite. Dudi ? got no complained from him, he just simply said veryyy... good. I was so happy.

And apparently my friends really enjoyed the lunch.