Food exploration around Jakarta

It has been almost 2 months I am working in Jakarta. I find the environment here is somewhat similar to KL. I have to go through the heavy road traffic every morning and evening. However, I need not drive here as I have no international driving license. =p Anyway, I don't think I can ever drive in such busy roads. I can see motorcycles, bicycles, mobile food stall and even horse on the road! Serious! I saw this horse cart was traveling on the road once. The rider gave hand signal to other cars before changing lane as there weren't any signal light. LOL!

Very often I will either cook instant noodles or take away a packet of fried rice + satay from the food stalls outside my apartment. After we got bored with those meals, my colleagues and I also eat at the nearby plaza - Plaza Setiabudi. There are lots of food varieties including Chinese, Japanese, Penangite, Western and also desserts.

Last Friday, we ate in a Japanese Restaurant - Sushi Groove. This is an international chained restaurant, which you can find it in KL too. However, the sushi and sashimi here is way better than KL's. Especially their salmon sashimi! Its fresh and served in a big portion. *yummers* On top of that, I always get my 15% 'student' discount by flashing my university card. Hahaha! It was actually my old university staff card, which is no longer in used. But now I can use it for discount. =p They didn't question me even though the word 'STAFF' was printed on the card. Probably they thought 'STAFF' was my surname? LOL!

 A plate of yummy eye roll, with tobiko and prawn *slurp* It costs IDR 30,000 (approximately RM 10.80)

Yesterday, I had another outing with my fellow colleagues. We hung out at Kelapa Gading Mall in the afternoon. First of all, we had our lunch in the so-called largest food court in Jakarta. M and I shared a plate of mixed carrot cake as we were still quite full from our breakfast. We also ordered a glass of unique drinks. Its green in colour with some jelly-ish balls and seaweed (I think). The jellies were great but the drinks were a bit too sweet.

My green drinks with some funny eggs... =p

After lunch, we walked around the mall for awhile before I split with my colleagues, as they got to catch their movies. While I was shopping alone, I found a pretty working shoes with reasonable price. Sadly, they did not have my size. =( What a luck...

2 hours later, I joined my colleagues for dinner at the food festival. That was the second last day of the festival. We were shocked to see the crowd! Many of them brought their whole family there. There were lots of stalls selling a variety of food, from appetizer to dessert to supper. *drolling*

M and I cant resist the temptations of food and we immediately bought our coupons. Then, we started to purchase our food from stall to stall. In the end, we got ourselves a plate of mutton fried rice, Indonesian crispy pancake, fruit rojak, tofu rojak, Bangkong noodles, martabak Medan and some local kuih muih.

These are our dinner for 3 pax (martabak Medan was not in the picture). In total, it costs about IDR 100,000 (RM 36)

This is the yummy crispy cake, comes with 2 flavours - pandan and chocolate. It costs IDR 10,000 (approximately RM 3.60) for 5 pieces

Fruit rojak (front); tofu rojak (back left); and Bangkong noodles (back right)
I love the fruit rojak the most. It taste different from those we have in KL. Basically, the fruits were blended and mixed with spicy sauce. *like*

After meal, we had our dessert - 'Es durian'!! We thought it was durian ice-cream. But it end up to be 2 durian fruit + condense milk on ice. XD Although the 'es durian' was not bad and it is something new to me, I still prefer the conventional durian ice-cream. hehe!

When we were about to go home, we saw a parade was held along the road side. M, B and I walked near the fence and watched the parade performance. I even stood on a metal stuff to get a better view. Haha! Luckily no security guard came and chase me down. The parade continued with a few minutes of fireworks!! I felt the fireworks were so near! It was just right in front of my eyes. Nice... Due to my cacat-ed handphone camera, I didnt get to snap any nice pictures on the fireworks. All I have is the following picture on the fireworks.

It was a wonderful outing. =)

*Cheers*

My photos appeared in random forwarded email

I received a forwarded email from a colleague of mine, E. The title of the email was 'English menu of a 3-star hotel in China'. When I opened the attached pictures, I found that those pictures were very familiar. Guess what? I was the photographer for those photos! LOL!

In order to confirm that, I opened my blog and compared each of the pictures. Yup!! I snapped the funny English menu using my mum's handphone in China. Later, I blogged about the funny menu in December 2007. It must be someone read it and downloaded those pictures from my blog. =p

I can't believe that my photos can ever appear in some random forwarded emails. Hahaha!!

*Cheers*

Bamboo bridge adventure

Last Thursday, my colleagues and I went to our usual food stalls nearby the office. However, the stalls were full house! While we were wandering around the stalls, we met another 2 local colleagues, R and Y. They brought us to another eating place opposite the road.

In order to get there, we got to cross a huge and deep drain!! All my guy colleagues crossed the bamboo bridge within seconds, while M walked all the way to the main road to avoid crossing the bridge. For me, I thought of being brave. I walked across the bamboo bridge with my high heels... It was very scary! I was shaking up there and took quite some time to cross it. Guess what? I created traffic behind me... LOL! Those people behind must be cursing me for creating such queue... =p

While I was striving to cross the bridge, my boss was happily snapping my picture!! I will never try crossing it again. *SCARY*

*Cheers*