Ceng Beng Festival

End of March until early April in every year Chinese people usually celebrate Ceng Beng Festival. This is the time when Chinese people pay respect to their ancestors by remembering them, cleaning their grave or tomb and burning hell money or other "luxurious" stuff.   This is also the time when everyone come to their parent's home and do family gathering.

Eventho my family is from Chinese line but we - the last 2 generations - didn't actually celebrate Ceng Beng that much.  We do still visit our grandparent's grave in Bogor and usually end up having lunch in one of my aunt's. The last proper Ceng Beng celebration I see was when I was around 10YO. My uncle's wife had lots of colorful food on the table with red candles and lots of burning incense. I waived three incenses each to every single photos on the table, and would patiently waiting there until she said I could eat the food! I didn't like burning the "money" because the smokes hurt my eyes.
However since she joined a certain religion I started to miss those steam chicken, roasted pork, eggs, various chinese cakes, basically the whole food; because she didn't do those ritual anymore.

Last week I had a chance to join Mr Chai's family to celebrate this festival. We woke up early in the morning and went to the Chinese Cemetery at the bottom of Bukit Sulap. Suddenly the memory stikes back.. minus the steam chicken and roast pork (they all vegetarian food) but MORE money! I've never seen so much money like that before. There were some gold plates, dollar from hell bank, suites and dresses with watch and mobile phone and shoes.  After the family gave the respects, all those stuff were burn. The heat was so hot - I had red face after that.

It's great knowing back the culture.. :)  

Year of the Rabbit

This would be my first Chinese New Year with the family after years living far away and hopefully my last time to receive the red envelope before the wedding this year. Although my family from both my parents side don't have very thick chinese culture, but I could see that this year's celebration was more lively than before. This probably because we have the third generation popping out in the last 2 years; they look like some pop rock candies and cute jelly beans!

The celebration was started really early in the morning with some children from the neighborhood came and yelled out my parent's name in front of our house, then my dad will came out and gave everyone red envelope.

Then the rest of the day was full with family time, met my mom's family in the day and my dad's in the evening. Lot's of laugh, love and food; and last but not least... the gambling session - one of the essence of real Bangka people.. 

IVU Congress

Mr Chai came to Jakarta!  Mainly was for participating in the 39th IVU World Vegetarian Congress 2010, but he still have time going around Jakarta with me during the weekend.

Ok, now you probably amaze how on earth that our beloved city could host this World class type of congress?? Apparently she could! Thanks to the Vegan Society of Indonesia and specially the lovely and charming Drs.Susianto,MKM; the head of VSI. I don't know him in person but I saw his friendly face a lot during the congress.

Here are some photos taken this morning, photos from one of the symposium, some food stall and from the talk show - broadcasted live in MetroTV from the lounge.

Above you can see the three important persons in this event John Davis, George Jacob and the charming Susianto during the talkshow.

A lot of Veg restaurants, veg food and environmental friendly products were introduced in this event. My favorite was the Indonesian owned Chocolate product named Monggo Chocolate. Produced by Jogjakartan company using our famous Indonesian cocoa. They sold dark chocolate range in this event because vegan are not supposed to consume milk and they use 100% cocoa butter not gluten, But I still think their 58% dark chocolate are still too sweet.  Anyway, I'm still proud to know that we have this chocolate tho mainly it is because of their nice packaging.  I'm so absurd! but who cares... :) 

Oh and I am now officially a member of IVS.  I'm proudly a vegsible - flexible vegetarian LOL  

Body Nothing Performance

My first 'come back' to Gedung Kesenian Jakarta after 5 years and was happen in same time with Jakarta Anniversary Festival. I've been carefully picked a couple of performances from their program this month. One of it was The Body Monologue Performance 2010! (Tubuh Mengambang di tiang-tiang). I was interested on the genre - contemporary dance theatre, the brief and how the poster look.

Anyway, my expectation was dropping to my knee level when I looked at the synopsis flyer (badly designed) and after steped in to the auditorium because there wasn't much people came actually, I'm pretty sure most of the audience are their (dancers) own family. And they decided to change the title to: The Body Nothing Performance, although the staff said the whole concept were not changed.
The Body Nothing Performance is the performance to listen the strength and the ways the body heal it's social wounds, far from the mainstream identity loudspeakers that lasted through politics and arts.
Director/ Choreographer: M Aidil Usman

The last gong was hit, Lights were dimmed down. A moment after that six bald males in various body shapes in their stripes boxers just charged in to the middle of the stage doing chaotic movement - It was so confusing, I re-read the synopsis again just to make sure we were not seeing Gollums Monologue.




Then everything started to get interesting. I'm not loving it, but have to say I enjoyed all their body movement, how they tell the story with their bodies, limited vocals and lighting on stage. I love Wirman Simago, his solid yet flowing movement. In the synopsis, they mentioned about a body of an old actor which haven't been on the stage for a while. Was it him? And how come he looks familiar?

It was a great performance, they all make sense after we discussed it again on the way home. Too bad they closed the performance by playing "We Are The Champion" - I was screaming in my head "why, why, why, why?" with painful smile while clapping my hands off.

photos: courtesy of Antara Photo by Fanny Octavianus

Bacang

Another festival day today... Chinese people are celebrating Peh Cun by having Bacang - a glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo leaves in a shape of pyramid. This sticky food nowadays is available daily - we usually have it for breakfast here at home.
So, everyday is a festival day for me.. ;) yay!!

Fringe10 - parade night

Well, last day shouldn't be staying at home packing. We decided to end my last night in Adelaide with a bang - or something like that.

Thank God The Fringe Festival was officially opened today. We went to see the parade. To me, the parade was a kind of resume of every festivals and everything that happen in Adelaide. From the Indigenous, Enviro people (eat vegie y'all!), GLBT, youngsters, Emos, Dancers, Geeks, Disable peoples etc. Here are some highlights from the parade. Suprissingly, no Nayima Hassan!! ppffeeewwww....


and here are some photos of the lovely gurls....

Comedy night

I intend to spend my last days in Adelaide enjoying the festivals which start to kick in this February. Not much but I still could see 2 comedy shows last night.






Justin Hamilton's Idiot Man Child was hilarious. His first review just came out at dbMagazine yesterday and seems not bad. I cant stop laughing when he said "you are not as interested as you think you are". That was a joke about the tram with 3 people sitting next to him. And the vibrating!! hahahahahahaha hilarious!



Second performance was Red Bastard from USA. Eric Davis act as The Bouffon, first thought cross my mind was.. gosh this guy look like deformed red capsicum. We might not had the greatest audience (only 65 people out of 350 seats) but we had fun because that means The Red Bastard could touched every single of us.
Check the website, I learnt alot about Eric Davis and The Bouffon there.

Red Pinky day

It's a Confusing day.. Even my mobile screen-saver tend to choose Valentine's day than Chinese New Year. It has floating hearts since morning and no sign at all for fireworks. It needs to know that her owner prefer CNY than Valentine's.

Anyway, Marie+Neil and I went for lunch at House of Pearl. It's a new restaurant just opened a week ago in China Town. Food are alright, we all love Eggplant with garlic and chili! Battered small cubes of Eggplants deep-fried together with lots of minced garlic and chili. It's crunchy but soft inside. I think should be easy to cook this.


Then we went for a walk in the city, dropped by to Garden of Unearthly Delights. Remind me that I should see at least 1 performance before I fly back.

Gong Xi and Happy Valentine's day
XOXO

Joyeux Noel!!

OOhhh.. best lunch ever! Not just because everything was seafood, but lots of things! Xmas lunch this year hosted by Marie and Neil as the BBQ-chef. Start from Abalone soup, Garlic Prawns, Pickled Octopus, Stuffed Squid, BBQ Snapper, Yummy Oysters and Marie's delicious Mussles.

Some peoples are not in this photos but they surely came home with full stomach~~

We even had Tiger Moment! John T-16 months tot- taught us how to swing.

And of course Gift time!! from Rua, Ahmed and Yafa. (I didn't even gave them presents - shame on me!) All the things that I love - except the "very personal" one.. cant even mentioned it here, because it is too personal. Who's hair was that???!!! eeuuwwwwww
But Thank You So Much!!! I feel like I received xmas presents from the whole Adelaide!
Guess what! So coincidence that I have Camilla Morton's first book! Thanks for giving me her second book, I will read it through for year 2010.
Like people say... What has been started can not be stopped. I should go hunting her third book!
Now, I'm officially one of those Legally Blondes chick.. double Yay!! - err.. with dark hair who hates pink, totally blind about fashion brands and pretend that Victoria Beckham was her twin sister!

Carols by Candlelights

Last week was my second time attending Carols by Candlelights in Adelaide. Oh.. those memories, me just graduated and worked in as (replacement) waiter in Wild Thai while looking for a real job. This year is different..

Anyway.. weather was perfect (20-ies something) and as guessed before it was hardly to get any sit around the stage except if already camped there 3 hours before under unfriendly heat! I decided to sit across the river. I think looking at the crowd and listen to the carols more than enough to brought up my xmas spirit back after the pageant!

It felt like real Xmas (minus the snow)..

Yalla 2009

This might be the most random photo collage I ever made.
- A shot of 3 belly dancers - students of Belly Dance Academy of Nayima Hassan. I somehow grow some kind of hate/obsession (weird eh) with this lady, Nayima Hassan, whom unfortunately didn't show up today. I think it is because of every time we have middle-east theme festivals in Adelaide, she always there and I swear - tho i don't know how to dance, she just only shaking her excessive flab.
- A shot of some kind of bronze kettles which quite antique and unique
- photo of my first degree sunburn result of reading book on grass pretending I was in my middle-east vacation
and the last but not least..
- a photo of an I-dont-know-man held by policemen with his exposed buttocks.

But yea, I had fun today.. :D

Giant Mailbox

Me with the giant Xmas mailbox (virtually - coz no one available to take my pict huhuhuhu..)

Update!!! me in Adelaide Fashion Week

YAY!! I've got snapped and it is up on GRLmobile's FB.. awesomness!!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2869719&id=25760268944

Lovely people - Adelaide Fashion Festival

Almost couldn't opened my eyes when stepping out from the office. The heat was just ridiculous!! 41degree, it was really hurt your skin and dry your eyes. I cant imagine what will happen end of dec.

So.. dry eyes need some cooling.. where else should we go than Adelaide Fashion Festival parade, series of summer clothes and swimmers. Plus: I get snapped by GRLmobile because "you must be looking pretty fine"
Will wait till it get uploaded in FB. cross my lovely fingers!

Pride March

SOOOO EXCITED to the max!!! Marie and I just joined the crowd in Pride March. Loving all those lovely people and cant wait to see one of their performance next week.
This was even better than Christmas pageant!!


And I just knew that in 2007 SA have new rights for same sex couple. Good on ya, SA!!

Christmas pageant

Sadly this year's Christmas pageant was disappointing. I think it was because of the heat wave, people prefered stay at home in AC and watched pageant from tellie.

This morning Adelaide tried to make the second attempt at the Guinness World Record for the largest Mexican wave. I was sooooo excited waving with the crowd only to find that it was fail.

Other disappointing thing was .. ok.. please see photo below. I'll let u be the judge.. *sigh (disappointed way beyond the valley of disappointment). Sorry mr cadet 2009.. I wasn't trying to be rude.. but.. u know..


Anyway, I still enjoyed taking piccies of all the floats, bearing in mind that this would be my last pageant. hiiiiiiiks....

RAS 2009

Amazingly I'm still here to see RAS 2009. i thought last year will be my last RAS.

So just to make the visit different with last year, today we came in the morning to see all indoor stuff. My fave is Jenny Gillies Wearable Blooms, too bad not allowed to take any pictures or movies. Oh well.. at least we still can see the pig racing and pig diving!!

SALA Festival ON

It's not like I'm involve in the festival or something (*would love if I could).. But we are just trying want to be part of the annual Visual Art Festival in SA.

We went to Kerry Packer Civic Gallery yesterday to see some artworks done by a group of SA artists, architects and designers who are working at the School of Art, Architecture & Design, UniSA. Traces explores connections and intersections between the work of artists, architects and designers engaging with the key themes of Drawing / Sustainability / Environment. salafestival

Let's rank it
- nice red wine reference from everyone - FREE
- nice chesse which I think has similar taste with cheddar cheese from Kraft but with nice aftertaste - FREE
- nice orange juice only for me - FREE
- nice gallery
- and of course interesting artworks - FREE

What we/I learnt
- early August still winter
- always always make a booking to Kublai Kahn.

Gourmet Weekend - Xpress unplanned instant gateaway

Clare Valley Gourmet weekend 2009 trip turned out to be a great trip. We were so afraid this Saturday would be cloudy with some shower but luckily we had perfect autumn weather.
Who would have thought we would stayed overnight at Elinor's nana house this weekend. A day trip suddenly became a quick gate away "holiday".

A couple of sips at Penna Lanes Wines, staring at the milky way, get lost in Mintaro's maze garden, wearing perfect noses and eating yummy chocolate cake at Paullet Wines.




What we learnt:
McClarren Vale and Clare Valley are completely 2 different places.
There is no such thing as Jumping Bear
Melodious is a word
Not only Red bull can give you wing
Portugasm is an age-old Portuguese tradition that involves reaching an elevated state of enjoyment and satisfaction. Ie. Eat Nando's then u'll get it.
Yes, you can squised 4 girls at the back seat.

Fruit n Veg Parade

For the first time, Central Market Adelaide held Fruit n Veg Parade. Quite small but colourfull and I found (at last) fruit slicer which gives perfectly nice fine cut for carrots.