Birthday Din Din at Goods Diner

First of all, I want to wish everyone a happy new year. May this new year of 2013 be a better year for all of us. On any given year, the last week of December is usually a busy week for me. From holiday parties, Christmas, my birthday and new years all back to back on the same week. Recovery mode is much needed after this.

Today I wanted to share my birthday dinner with the family this past weekend at the Goods Diner in SCBD area. I had such a great time with the whole family the entire night was full of love and laughter.

 

More info: Goods Diner



xoxo Sari Soepono

From my heart in Jakarta

As much as I love my newly fresh blog that I am collaborating with my twin cousins, I still miss having it on my own. This blog is still my baby and although it may not be as nice as the new one, I still think of this blog throughout.  So, today I finally decided to keep this blog alive as my personal posts.

It has been about 4 months since my Hiatus post. Obviously, many things happened in between. First, I moved back to my Indonesia. After 10 years of being a Delawarerian, I decided it's time to go home to motherland reuniting with my family and home. Second, I went on a lifetime Europe trip with my cousin. Third, new years is around the corner! Where did 2012 go? Seriously.

But to tell you the truth, I'm very excited to end this year. I don't think this year has been a great year for me in general. I'm anxious to start the new 2013 with new adventures and hopefully awesomeness.

Living in Jakarta has its own ups and downs. It is truly a huge roller coaster to the extreme. At times I feel like I'm on top of the world, other times I feel like in a shit hole somewhere in the ghetto street of the city both mentally and physically speaking. It's hard to describe, but my mood swings have been tested on to the extreme.

Independence? You can forget all that. Living back with your parents under one roof is nothing to be independent to. Carpooling and sharing a car with your parents is another level of a dependency. Their extreme worrisome and curiosity of your life sometime took its toll on me. That one-arm private space that you crave for becomes a luxury.

On the positive side, I have zero bills to pay. what? yes!

In the past 4 months, I had so many reverse culture shocks, re-exploring my own home in a set of different eyes, best friends got married, dealing with uncomfortableness in so many different levels, seeing weird things on a daily basis, dealing with a non-standard "everything", new place new policy, car accidents, and the hardest part would be breaking my own rules. *sigh

Expectations need to be immensely managed, otherwise, disappointment is your best friend.  No promises, no expectations - a life of hakuna matata.

The best part of this process is reconnecting with old friends. Those friends you left behind 10 years ago, you begin to know who is your real friends and who is not. As for new friends, this is still questionable. I'll leave it at that for now. For what is worth, family always comes first. Always.

Are you ready for the new years?

Tiger Island (Pulau Macan)

When it comes to the thought of Jakarta, it can be easily described with “skyscrapers”, “traffic jams”, “pollution”, “dust”, and “dirty”. No pun intended, I am only stating the obvious. I was so amazed when I arrived to Tiger Island, while it is still technically part of Jakarta, it is yet so much of the opposite from what I just described above.

Tiger Island (Pulau Macan) is one of the smaller islands in part of the Thousands Island (Kepulauan Seribu) area.  We took a small speedboat on a Saturday morning from the Ancol Marina for about 1 hour 30 minutes ride to the island. The speedboat is able to take roughly 30 guests on the larger side. Our group at the time was only 21 guests excluding the boat crew.

Once we hit the 1-hour boat ride, I can start seeing the crystal clear blue ocean – more like a turquois color on the shallower part and onyx blue on the deeper part of the ocean. The line was prominent. The water is so clear that I can see the coral reefs and fishes down below from the boat. I thought I was in heaven.



When we arrived we were greeted by a buffet of food for breakfast. The lady-cook really knows what she is doing. Out of the whole 1 night stay in the island we had five amazing meals.  Everyone I know took seconds on their plate. We cannot stop complementing the lady-cook whenever she comes out from her kitchen to check up on the food.

Before I get into the lodging part, I do have to mention that Tiger Island is an eco-friendly island. One, they generate their own power from solar, and two, you will see many written notices on bathrooms to conserve/save water - Take quick showers and close the tap while shampooing or soaping. The room itself is not like a typical hotel brick-on-brick type of building. It’s a cottage-shack made out of raw woods and bamboos from the trees of the island. There is no proper wall to separate the “room”. Lastly do not even think about AC.


We took the larger place called “Sunset Hut”. The shack itself can take 8 people, but we were there only for party of 5. There were 1 queen bed (for 2 people) and 4 single beds (for 4 people). There was still space available to add 2 more single beds for the 7^th and 8^th persons if we have more people. They provide us with 2 standing electric fans, a speaker stereo to plugin your iPod for your favorite music, and a water dispenser for drinks.

I also have to mention one thing about the bathroom situation. I believe our shack is the only one that has our own private bathroom right next to our shack. The other rooms/shack will have to use the shared-bathroom outside – there are about 6 shared- bathrooms throughout this small island. So if you have issues with the bathroom situation, you might have to take the Sunset Hut to get a private bathroom

Enough about the amenities, I want to get back to the sparkling blue water right in front of our shack.

The deck right in front of our shack has a stairs that allows us to get into the water. We were in the water all day, swimming, kayaking and snorkeling. The water is warm that we could be there all day without getting wrinkles. The island provides all the water equipment for free. The beautiful ocean is in the horizon and by the late afternoon you were given this marshmallow-y sunset view right from your deck. One word: Amazing.

Bottom line, I was very satisfied with the whole trip. It was one night to remember and I cannot wait to go back, perhaps with more people. The more the merrier. :)

For more info and pricing please go to pulaumacan.com

xoxo, Sari Soepono

Travelling Packing Tips

The holiday season is here and I'm sure that most of you have exciting travel plans ahead of you. Whether it's with friends or family, this is the time the year where people travel heavily. Coming from my recent trip, I thought I'd share some tips and tricks on packing tips. It has worked wonders for me and I hope it will be helpful for you too.

If i'd had the choice to travel, unless I'm going to a  beach/shore type of destination ( e.g. Bali, Miami, Hawaii), I'd prefer to travel during the Fall season. This is exactly what we did over our recent trip to Europe where we leave mid September and stayed throughout early October. This is best time to be outside where the air is nice and crisp without getting too cold.

Now here are several my general rules of thumb in packing:

1. Keep everything in neutral colors. This will make everything easily mixed and match. Neutral colors are blacks, browns, beiges, whites, and grays. I use this rule for clothes, shoes, and bags.

2. By keeping your outfits neutral, you can add color with different scarves. Pack a few to add a pop of color.

3. Bring comfortable shoes. Different people have their own level of comfort when it comes to shoes. Don't try to win style over comfort for this. Trust me.

4. Going to accessories, since we are keeping things simple and neutral, you can go a bit bold with jewelries. I usually don't bring my expensive jewelries when I travel and opt for costume jewelries. That way, if the worst case I lost them, it won't be a big deal. I like to bring different kinds of earrings because due to the outfits and scarves, you really can't see anything else (necklace, bracelets) other than your neck up.

5. Bring extra underwear. You just don't know.

6. Toiletries: apart from all the everyday skincare and makeup products you need, don't forget to bring your own shower cap. You will be surprised some hotels don't provide shower caps in their amenities. You don't want to be hassled to do your hair everyday do you?

7. Bring extra batteries and memory cards for your camera and don't forget the charger.

8. I always bring my travel hair dryer with me. It's small and foldable and yet big at 1895 watts. I have a thick big frizzy hair so, I can't use those wall hair dryer in the hotel bathroom that goes for 1000 watts. My hair just won't cooperate.

9. If you decided to bring any electronic equipment with you, make sure you bring the international adapters. Also, make sure your equipment is either dual-voltage, or matches the voltage of the place you are visiting. This is very important, otherwise that heavy thing you'll be carrying will be useless.

10. Have fun!!

If you go by my rules from point 1-4, your outfits would look something like this.

























Happy Holidays and safe travels!

xoxo, Sari Soepono