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August 31, 2004
two sisters
Posted by Yasmina at 07:37 PM
August 30, 2004
weeeeekkkkend
shit it's monday again and it's my day off, so i'm sitting here with my sister, debating on what to do today. we'll probably not get to do much today because it's past lunchtime and she is still lounging around the house in her pajamas, talking on the phone to one of her best friends in london.
not looking forward to work tomorrow. doing some weird presentation posters for a high-profile project. however, this week i am supposed to be starting a project for the paris office, which is supposed to be 7 weeks long, and would require us to be paris-based. i'm quite looking forward to that, being in another place, even though edwin, my manager, says it's a "tense" project.
something is really wrong with me 'cos i really don't feel that creative anymore these days. maybe i need a new job? new challenges, new people and all that.
Posted by Yasmina at 02:07 PM
chinese statue
Posted by Yasmina at 08:59 AM
August 29, 2004
roadside flowers
Posted by Yasmina at 12:34 PM
August 28, 2004
papaya mom
my mom and her papaya trees *papayeiras?!?!*
Posted by Yasmina at 05:07 PM
August 27, 2004
brievenbus in tuban
old colonial dutch-style mailbox in the main post office yard in tuban.
Posted by Yasmina at 04:58 PM
August 26, 2004
ladida dida
so my sister yacinta is here, visiting me for a while on her way to portugal from indonesia. it's good when she is here so we can catch up with each other's lives. we haven't lived in the same house for years and as adults, i never had her to myself over two weeks.
she'll stay a couple of weeks this time, i guess. she knows a lot of my friends already from our sailing trip and previous visits, and she is quite comfortable with them so when i'm busy, she goes out with them. ha, less guilt for me.
this weekend i want to take her to rotterdam or maastricht. we might get lazy and wake up late though, so might end up around eindhoven. on monday, alex is arriving in amsterdam from london so the plan is for me, yacinta and robert to come to spend the afternoon in amsterdam and meet alex for dinner.
i'm quite thankful that she got here last tuesday because she took care of robert for a couple days, like making his lunch and tea while i was away at work. plus, she's been cleaning the flat and doing the dishes daily, so i'm happy, hehe. typical.
more update later on the adventures of yasmina and yacinta haryono in NL.
Posted by Yasmina at 09:21 PM
August 22, 2004
salmonella poisoning
so today robert and i took a trip to the emergency stand-by doctor's post at the diaconessen hospital.
the diagnosis was as follows: i must have eaten something dodgy at the end of my trip to indo, and got some kind of stomach virus, and when i got to NL, robert managed to catch this virus, although the doctor said by this time my body was already flushing out the virus. which is why we both had a bit of diarrhea during my first weekend back in NL.
robert's headaches were probably caused by dehydration, which in turn was caused by his diarrhea. he was taking norit, but norit does not solve bacterial problems in the stomach. because of the continuing dehydration, robert developed headaches and this week, had a fever of 39-40C.
mr doctor says i probably have better resistance due to a better immune system, which is why i flushed the virus out pretty quickly, in 3-4 days, and i wasn't ill or anything during this process. true, my body always reacts almost immediately when i've eaten something dodgy; i never get food poisoning the way my former housemates used to, and i don't really get sick from bad food.
unfortunately robert's immune system is not equally well-equipped to this kind of thing. mr doctor thinks it is most likely to be salmonella poisoning; for sure, some sort of bacterial virus rather than ordinary diarrhea.
so mr doctor prescribed a pill which will help with the bacterias in robert's belly.
he also listed the food i should be feeding him; fruits, plain rice, pasta, which is what i have been feeding him anyway for the last days. no fatty foods or too much dairy either, so poor robert was complaining that he cannot eat his favorite yoghurt for breakfast.
tomorrow we will call the doctor again, and ask for another prescription, as he only prescribed one pill for today, just to see if robert reacts well to it.
just now, robert and i had plain white rice to eat, and then slices of watermelon. now i am going to feed him apple sauce (apelmoes in dutch, it's more like grated apples made into a porridge-like paste than sauce) with some grated cinnamon before i run off to the videoshop to get some coca-cola.
my pediatrician used to give us soda or coke to settle our bellies whenever we had belly problems as children and it always worked. mr doctor also said i should give robert lots of coke, which he totally hates. ha!
anyway, that was the story of my weekend of playing nurse with robert.
Posted by Yasmina at 05:56 PM | Comments (1)
August 20, 2004
nice logo
frestea at a roadside stall
Posted by Yasmina at 11:14 PM
August 18, 2004
concerns
stuff that add a wrinkle to my forehead:
1. domain renewal. for some odd reason, when i tried to renew my domain last month at pixiedomain.com, it went bonkers. pixie internet services are also the people who host me, and now every time i login to try and manage my domains, it just doesn't work. bananeira.com expires friday august 20. shit or what? i've mailed the pixie people; no reply yet. pooohhhh.
dear oh dear. so if you don't see this after friday that means i didn't manage to renew bananeira.com.
2. robert is really ill. he usually doesn't get sick, so it worries me. he has had a continuing headache for a couple of weeks as well as diarrhea. he's been taking norit, though not all the time, and when the headaches get really bad, he takes paracetamol.
today he was already feeling poorly, but insisted on going to work. he's now running a high fever. i water him regularly so he doesn't get dehydrated, and he's all tucked up in bed, but still, i worry. poor baby. :(
Posted by Yasmina at 11:44 PM
August 15, 2004
found
i found something that i didn't know i needed. i found robert and i hope i get to keep him (forever and ever). :)
Posted by Yasmina at 09:57 PM
dessert at duck king
Posted by Yasmina at 06:15 PM
subud world congress logo competition
so last night i was online talking to vitor in portugal and he asks me to contribute to the subud world congress logo competition. which, btw, has a deadline on Friday August 20th. right, nice one.
i put up my designs on subudlife so people can criticise it. this is the link to my designs here. however, if you are going to leave comments on SL, you will need to register and be a member. otherwise just leave your comments on my blog.
cheers.
Posted by Yasmina at 05:28 PM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2004
blog spammers
uh oh i just caught a spammer leaving adverts for viagra on my blog. thal and avianto have had problems with them before so i should be more alert on these things i guess.
maybe i will disable comments on my posts for the time being.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:59 PM
dinner for four
<b>who:</b> yasmina and robert, robert brans and karin
<b>what:</b> just dinner and catching up
<b>when:</b> last night (friday night)
<b>where:</b> our flat
<b>the menu:</b>
garlic bread
mango salad
happy chicken on brown rice
apple pie with vanilla custard and dark chocolate shavings (robert's invention)
<b>happy chicken</b>
heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, and add 2 medium red onions (diced). when the onions are done, add 4 chicken breast fillets, also diced. add salt, pepper, and stir on high heat. when the chicken is about half cooked, add some fresh herbs: rosemary, thyme, oregano. also add a splash of (single) cream and creme fraiche (sour cream). stir fry until chicken is done.
then add 6 large mushrooms, thinly sliced. stir together with chicken, gradually adding more cream and sour cream to make a sauce. the amount of cream you add depends on how creamy and saucy you want your dish to be. when everything is swimming in sauce (or evenly coated in sauce), add the pear and peach slices. i usually use 2 pears and 2 peaches.
happy chicken is called happy chicken because it makes us happy to eat it, especially when we cook it for friends. :)
*you can also add crispy bacon bits to the dish but i don't eat pork so i don't cook it*
Posted by Yasmina at 10:33 PM
tea trees
tea plantations as far as the eye could see. kebun teh puncak, july 2004.
Posted by Yasmina at 06:55 PM
August 13, 2004
candi singosari
candi singosari, a 12th century temple built to store the ashes of the last (or first?) king of kertanegara.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:56 PM
August 12, 2004
announcement
this month i will put up one photo a day of my trip to indonesia last month.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:57 AM
getting married
no, not me and robert. i should be so lucky, har har.
it seems this year is a year of friends and family getting hitched. two of my cousins got hitched last april and may in indonesia; alas, i didn't make it to both their weddings. another cousin got engaged in july, for a january 2005 wedding.
i better make it to this one, otherwise it would be the fifth family wedding i'd missed, and then i'm going to get bad karma and no one will turn up at my wedding.
a second cousin also getting married in january. i saw him and his family in surabaya last month and his mom invited robert and i to come along for a traditional javanese wedding. sounds good, so i am coming to that one as well.
naya; called me in indo, after she got back from NL, and said fuad proposed and they are setting the date for december 26th. uh oh, i might not yet be in indo at that time.
and when i got back to work 2 weeks ago, i got an email at work from richard, saying he was making an honest woman out of his girlfriend len, har har. the wedding will be in london, at end of september, he wrote, and it would be fab if robert and i could make it?
we booked our tickets last night, for a long weekend in london, and we have reservations at hotel pimlico AKA gaya's flat, LOL. and then who should it be, if not gaya and her man themselves, who had a small civil service in london last week. she called me last night to tell me. wow! congratulations!
my next topic: indonesian weddings. complicated guest list, several traditional ceremonies and costumes to get through, mystery relatives turning up, and a whole lot more.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:46 AM | Comments (1)
pillow
pillow willow shallow wallow swallow, i like my pillows to be medium soft, not too hard otherwise i get a crick in my neck, and not too soft, enough so that i can punch it into a comfortable shape.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:27 AM
leaf
Posted by Yasmina at 10:10 AM
August 11, 2004
toilet paper
so today somehow conversation between robert and i turned into toilet paper. he was complaining that the toilet paper and napkins at work were the rough, recycled paper type; the ones you get at school, you know, the ones that resembled sandpaper more than toilet paper.
so i feigned shock and said that the toilet paper in the women's toilets are soft white ones, not high-quality but were better than the 'school' ones, and sometimes we had pink roses on them. i said i thought the boys' toilet paper had blue ships printed on white.
either he is completely gullible or he hasn't really gotten to know me in the last three years. robert got really riled up about it and he's going to complain to our manager about the difference in toilet paper.
'this is discrimination,' he tells me. 'just because we're boys, they think we don't have delicate skin? we want nice toilet paper too.'
uh. i actually don't know how i managed to keep a straight face as he said this.
robert continued on. 'or, i can ask one of the girls to pop into the women's toilets to get me a roll whenever i need to go? that way i get to use nice toilet paper too?'
this is too funny. i can imagine the look on the faces of our female colleagues when robert asks them to fetch toilet paper for him, and upon their return with the same toilet paper as the men's, i wonder if robert will catch on, or continue to think that women now have 'sandpaper' toilet paper too, due to budget cuts at work.
oh dear, oh dear, i hope he doesn't read this blog tonight.
oh! dinner 's here! we ordered from oriental green house: bulgogi, garlic chicken stir-fry, foo yung hai, loempia, steamed vegetables. yumm!
Posted by Yasmina at 08:03 PM
August 09, 2004
online shopping
darn it! i keep getting these newsletters from victoria's secret and figleaves with details of their summer sale, so before my left hand could press apple+Q on my powerbook, my right hand was clicking on the links and before i knew it, i'd spent nearly a couple of hundred €uros on pretty underwear. omg.
i blame the heat for this act of temporary insanity.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:35 PM
August 04, 2004
hot in NL
omg, it's hot over here too. the bad thing is that there's no airco or fan in the apartment. the good thing is that we have none of jakarta's smog, nice fresh air. it's nice and cool and sometimes breezy in the morning, so i like to wake up early and drink my tea in the balcony.
been sleeping with the windows wide open. cold showers several times a day. ice cream in bed last night. been going to work in skirts, and drinking lots of cold cold water. lunching outside, taking peeks at boys from behind my sunglasses. ;)
i swear boys are so much better-looking in the summer.
hah, robert missed me so much while i was away that he says from now on, we should no longer be holiday-independent. the good news is that we've pretty much decided to take a sabbatical leave from work next year, for about 3 months, so we can travel.
the idea is for us to come to indonesia. travel a bit, make some nice furniture to bring back to NL, eat good food, maybe even get our divemasters, spend time with the family. sounds good, no?
Posted by Yasmina at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)
