Morning Ritual

A decent cup of coffee to start the morning is a necessity. But a kickass cup of coffee made to perfection with thick silky layer of foaming milk, followed by bitter sweet freshly brewed coffee perfect to the last drop is an absolute bliss which can also be a bless to start the day. Only certain places can make this kind of coffee, from personal experience, Illy coffee outlets are among those few. I was about to mention Starbucks, but recent visits to a couple of their outlets proved otherwise. Mind you, their coffee now tends to be overbrewed and slightly bitter.

Since we live in nowhere land where it's practically impossible to get out and find these things, we resign to having our own coffee machine. Our home brewed coffee proves to be the best, even better than coffee from the hotel. It's quite easy to make those heavenly coffee, actually.

First thing is, of course, the coffee - freshly ground one, not one of those instant coffee *yuck, just throw them in the dumpster please.....* I personally prefer Illy or Douwe Egberts. Second choice would be Lavazza and Excelso (I think Kalosi Toraja is the best one).
Then the milk. They've got to be fresh and cold! Non fat is supposedly making a better foam, but it makes the coffee less kicky lacking the richness of a full cream milk. This is when it gets a bit tricky. Foaming a milk takes a lot of practice. If the machine is too hot, the milk deflates, if the steamer is too deep, you get big bubbles. By surfing right on the surface of the milk, you'll get those perfect thick silky foam.
Here're some tricks to steam the milk

Hooked on the cute reapers

This is my favorite movie to watch in my spare time, just to get back into my quirkiness then get on with the day. Although the title of the movie may put off some, this movie describes our most avoided topic a.k.a death in a strange, peculiar, quirky way giving it a new meaning to 'dealing with deaths' .

These grim reapers are assigned to handle 'accidental deaths' only which are mostly rather goofy actually; like a man who died choked by a candy on his daughter's birthday, or a newly wed couple who both died before they even stepped out of the church, or a grumpy old grandma who got squished under a garbage dumpster.

The first CD was the story before George, died after being hit by a flaming toilet seat fell from the sky, out of MIR space station. The rest of the story is about her coping with her undead - death, as she couldn't move on to the 'tunnel of lights' like the rest of dead people do, instead she had to stay with the living, but working for death. Her daily routine involves getting post-it from Rube which contains detail of the next person to die ETD (estimated time of death) and location where she has to be before death takes place. She has to tap them and release the soul, sort of a knock on the door before it hits you.

........George Lass is an 18-year-old girl whose life seems to be going nowhere. She is not motivated to do anything, including being a good person or a bad person. Bad people are punished by Man's Law, and good people are punished by Murphy's law. Under her mother's insistence, George is forced to get a job, which did not last long.

All of the reapers are all, like George, people who died with unresolved issues, and aren't allowed to go to their final destination until they have learned the lessons they failed to learn in life. Their job is to take the souls of people who die before they die. They don't do the actual killing. Gravelings, are the ones responsible for setting up the deaths.

The undead can interact with the living (though they can't die again, but apparently they can feel pain.) Unfortunately, it isn't quite a free ride.
George doesn't want to be a grim reaper, but has to fill an unspecified quota of souls before she is done. She is slowly accepting her role, though she can't believe she has found meaning in her afterlife.... **Article from DLM Review

Grim Reapers: (Wikipedia:) Death personified ~ Death has been personified as a figure or fictional character in mythology and popular culture. Because the reality of death has had a substantial influence on the human psyche and the development of civilization as a whole, the personification of Death as a living, sentient entity is a concept that has existed in many societies since the beginning of recorded history. In Western cultures, death is usually given the name "the Grim Reaper" and shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe, and wearing a midnight black gown with a hood.

Jajanan di Changshu

Beberapa hari lalu sempat jalan-jalan keluar karena udaranya udah lumayan menghangat. Akhirnya spring sampe juga disini, biarpun terlambat dan kadang-kadang cuaca masih nggak jelas - masih sering mendung, hujan dan berkabut tebal. On the way ke RT Mart, tebak coba gue ketemu apa di pinggir jalan? Tukang gorengan!!! Aaaahhh, udah segini lama tinggal disini, baru nemu kemaren itu.

Sering sih gue nemuin gerobak ibu-ibu yang mangkal di depan supermarket atau di tempat2 rame. Biasanya gerobak datar tanpa atap yang memajang deretan kotak-kotak plastik berisi berjenis-jenis sate ayam, bebek, tahu atau sosis dengan marinate macem-macem. Disampingnya ada pemanggang sate - bukan wajan. Tapi ini wajan!!! Berarti ada yang digoreng dong.... Dengan semangat gue deketin gerobak si ibu. Bener aja, gorengaaannn...

Macam-macam gorengan..... ada bakwan & tahu juga loh!

Tahu satu porsi seharga RMB 1 = Rp. 1100,-
udah pake saus siram plus irisan cabainya

It's Crayfish season!

Feeling a bit adventurous today, we walked by the aisles in Auchan supermarket this afternoon and passed by a bucketload of chinese crayfish on the fish section - apparently in season now. I have never cooked them before but their appearance is quite intriguing, surely challenging to cook. I wondered if the green curry sauce which I had in Auckland served with green lipped mussels can do. I decided to buy a handful to try. Upon a closer look, I noticed that these things didn't swim in water, instead they sort of walked on one another's back, had really really dark shells with tiny scorpion-like claws. Eeeekks!!! That put me off for a moment.....

All the 15 crawlers arrived safely at home. Mike helped to clean their guts simply by pulling their middle tail off - alive. Oef! Please, enough of this 'cruelty' - just dump them in the boiling water, will ya? After 5 minutes of steaming they looked almost edible enough ......

Freshly steamed chinese crayfish

Jiangsu province, where we live now, is quite famous for crayfish - which are also known as 'mini lobster' because of they're only as big as a thumb, with 3/4 of its length is the head. When in season, all local restaurants served them as a special offer - we just had the Hairy Crab season in last winter. Locals usually cooked them in light chili curry sauce.

It turned out that the green curry of our choice was a perfect one. I added a dash of coconut milk for the taste and sprinkled thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves. It tasted and smelled beautiful.

View Recipe Here

Toasting away by the lake side

Got up late that morning, like always :D, feeling completely refreshed. Since we needed to get internet access in late afternoon, we decided to hang around in the city center. There're rows of cafes right across the lake, but it seemed that the crowd were attracted to something else. Large billboards bearing colorful photographs from around the world with a little description below were lined up along the park. Wait, there's something else..... a few local artists placed blocks of tiles in the park, some sort of "walk of history", dating back from 1800 up to 2007..... Quite an interesting touch.

It was still 3 more hours to midday. Got plenty of time in our hands and we decided to spread our blanket on a carpet of fresh lime green grass by the lake. What a great spot! Chilled white wine in a glass, a plate of sliced cheese & smoked salmon. Perfect! We're all set for the afternoon. I've never realized how much I miss the sun. How warm it felt brushing against my skin. Hmm, toasty!

Lazying under the afternoon sky, giggling, sprawling, breathing in the breeze coming in from the lake. Aaaahhhh..... Luv spending days like this with you, babe.

Day 6 ~ Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu

That afternoon, we rushed down to Queenstown to watch a rugby match; Highlanders vs Chiefs. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do, at first, never seen a live match before. Once I went to the Bronco's in Denver Colorado, but that was a long time ago, and I barely remembered anything of the game.

It was pretty small in comparison to other live sports I'd seen. Ha, that only one game, of course. In short, I lasted only about 10 minutes. It was too cold, too uncomfortable and I was too grumpy to enjoy the game. I'd rather stay inside the van having wine and cheese. There's this great brie cheese we got the other day. Yummie.

Trying to get out of the park after the game was a bit ridiculous, almost an hour and half we were stuck there. Finally when we got out, we headed directly downtown Queenstown. Streets and alleys were totally full of people that afternoon. It was very touristic though, there were a couple of Indonesian student groups went shopping in the same souvenir store we were in. Babe was in a rugby craze mode - so it was REALLY important for us to find the nearest sports bar to catch the next rugby game on TV.

Let's just say he got his rugby and I got my nice dinner. Too bad no photos. It was almost 11pm by the time we're done. Too late to get a spot in holiday park. We drove around finding nothing. Luckily babe decided to go by a lake side in Frankton. It was a great choice!

It was tucked away from the crowd, great view of the lake and the next morning we woke up to the family of ducks swimming nearby. They joined us for breakfast, sort of, fighting for bread crumbs leftover. At one point, the ducks got too friendly and started to follow Mike around, begging for more crumbs. I thought I'd join them for a swim, although Mike tried to convince me that the water was still freezing cold at this time of the year.

I made a bet with him, I said I'd swim. It wasn't a bluff. He called the bet and said he'd put his money on it. Hehehhe, and guess who lost? I did jumped into the lake. It was like an instant brain freeze, only this went throughout my whole body. It was FREEZING COLD!! The coldness numbed my mind and the rest of my system, I just automatically swam quickly across and back, while the other campers on the other side obviously saw me jumped in. I heard them laughing. The best thing after the swim, was sitting in the sun with a warm coffee in my hand. Mike made it for me....

Day 5 ~ Lake Tekapo, Mount Cook

It was such a beautiful drive, stopping here and there, lots of coffee and wine. New Zealand is just an amazing land with so many untouched nature's beauty. Everything is still intact, well kept, the river is so amazingly clear with light turqoise color resulting from the melting glacier of the surrounding mountains.

First night on the road, we parked in a holiday camp by Lake Tekapo. It got quite chilly in the evening, good thing that the camper had a good heater inside. It felt awkward at times travelling with a full kitchen and a toilet at the back of the car. Hot coffee or chilled wine is just two steps away.

The next morning we stopped by at a salmon farm along the way to Mount Cook. Let me tell you, fresh salmons off the river are just awesome!!! A full plater of sashimi that we shared looked positively beautiful, fresh, vibrant orange color and those thin slices were simply melt in the mouth. We met a few other asian groups who went absolutely crazy over the salmon platter.... the japanese, thai and chinese.

After that refreshing but yummie lunch, we continued along the road to Mount Cook. The landscape got more breath taking, those backdrop overlapping mountains were sooooo beautiful. Massive spread of untouched beauty right in front of the eyes the whole time.

Day 3 ~ Wellington to Picton

We're off to Wellington by plane from NPY. It was such a tiny neat airport. Something about the angle of the sunlights, created such a nice feeling about the airport, getting ready to board that twin engine plane. Almost movie-like, you know, when it's almost the end of the movie and the audiences are swept through an awesome scenery of sun lit airstrip with bright blue sky as a backdrop..... Ah well, maybe it's the foolish romantist in me that's talking.

Spent a night in Wellington. The city has a lot of water around. Not the kind of city I would like to live in. Auckland maybe, NPY could be a bit too quiet for us, but we both love Arrowtown.

The next day we started off early around 8am. After grabbing a quick bite of pastries and strong coffee down @ Coffee Bean, we rushed off in a taxi to catch up the earliest ferry to Picton. We got in just in time... phew! Ferry was a bit too long and I wasn't really in the mood to be excited - coffee hadn't kicked in yet. Besides it's still too early.

Got off Picton around noon to pick up the train tickets. We had around an hour before the train arrived, so we had a time to explore a bit of Picton. Hmmmfff, already craving for real asian meals, lunch was a bit of a disaster. Kiwis food are still way too bland for me. Second option would be fast food joints, KFC or McD, which of course don't exist here.

I've never sat this long on a train before. This by far, the longest train ride I've ever had. TI was a 5-hour ride. Whahahaha.... thank God my babe was there with me, otherwise I would definitely have gone insane hearing the entire conversation of the two groups sitting behind us - a German old grandma who loudly shared the story of her life, which was very very very long... she hasn't finished when we got off the train. The other one was a group of Americans *you know how loud they can be* sharing their "amazing" travel stories, always topping up one another. I felt like I'm tuning into one of those "marathon amazing race" program on AXN.

At one point I reached the "I've had enough of this" and just tuned out completely, they're voices simply become incomprehensible gibberish. Christchurch was the last stop. Whoa, finally! Train ride was interesting but I wouldn't do it again, no thanks! Now, this is the city that seems livable.

The next morning were a bit easy, we didn't get up until late. No tight schedule. All we needed to do was to pickup our campervan at Maui, near the airport. We got the 4 berths campervan, a bit more space than we needed, but kitchen was just perfect!!! Full cabinets of cutleries, pots, plates, bowls and glasses. Tiny fridge that fits just enough for the road. The next thing was stock up for the road.

South Island, here we come!

Day 1 ~ New Plymouth

This is the beginning of our trip to the south island of New Zealand. First stop was Dad's house in New Plymouth. It's been quite a while since the wedding in Bali, October two years ago. Nice to see him and Helen again.

The neighbor's cat I remembered last time, was still there. He used to be so huge and healthy though. Dad said he barely comes over anymore, he seems a bit sick and has lost weight. Helen still cooks delicious lunch and dinner as always - she adds a special touch to food decoration adopted from Rumah Bali. Hehehe....

It was a relaxing two day at New Plymouth.