goofs of nutcracker

In local newspaper last week, there’s a photo featuring the smallest nutcracker in the world. Funnily, it didn’t say nutcracker. It was said ‘pemecah kacang‘ – literal translation of ‘nutcracker’ in Indonesian.

nutcracker ala andie

I was like … What?? I thought it was a name of a holiday toy which is a wooden carving of a soldier. Then I found out that the toy originally could be used to crack nuts! Nuts can be put in the big mouth (by lifting the lever at the back of the toy). When the lever was pressed down, the nuts cracked.

nutcracker ala steinbach

Nutcrackers are not everyday toys for us. I have never seen them before. So it’s cool that I don’t know anything about them. But the article was kind of misleading in a way. They should explain what it actually is. Why it’s called nutcracker and such and such. Goof readers like me can easily get confused. And I thought the newspaper editors were being stupid.

I think it’s smart to use the soldiers and knights to crack nuts. The nuts eaters like me can feel like royalty

bargaining idiot

I surfed sites on traveling to Shanghai yesterday because my parents and family are going for Christmas holiday. Virtual tourist gives some information on shopping in Shanghai. It’s interesting to read other tourists’ experiences.

One lady said that she wanted to buy a set of hairpin, the seller asked for RMB 140 (around USD 14), and she walked away with only paying RMB 4. And then one other tourist said that she was bargaining for an Armani jacket which was RMB 14,000 and paid RMB 900 at the end. Isn’t that ridiculous?

Last year in Madras (aka Chennai), I went shopping by myself at a souvenir shop in the mall. I really liked a wall hanging with golden thread embroidery and sequined. Very beautiful. The shop owner asked for USD 400. An idiot as I was, I didn’t actually think it was expensive. I wasn’t really thinking of buying. So I asked for USD 80, just for the fun of it. The seller was very pushy and I didn’t want to increase my price. After 15 minutes arguing, suddenly he shouted “Sold!” I couldn’t describe how shocked and speechless I was. On my way back to the hotel, I couldn’t stop swearing at myself for being such an idiot. I bet it doesn’t worth more than USD 20!

So, rule of thumb

• Bargain for at least 80% off the opening price at all times! If you got the nerve, go for 10% of the asking price. It’s amazing what my mother can get away with by doing that. I am actually scared of going shopping with her. She got some nerve!

• I shouldn’t shop at tourists’ spots. I am an easy target. They can actually smell me.

sequined & embroidered wall hanging from madras

Weekly Winners

 

Schoolgirls in village

Village

Buddhist praying altar at home

Rambutan is in season! Yummm….

 

me, my finger and a mercedes

This is a story of a girl, a finger and a car.

Exactly 15 months ago, I went on a business trip to Singapore with my mother. At night we were invited to dinner by her cousin. They came to pick us up in an S Class Mercedes. When I was getting off the car, I didn’t want to slam it too hard because it was such a fancy car, so I closed it slowly. As stupid as it sound, my left hand pointy finger got caught! The car door has some kind of suction feature, even I didn’t slam it, as soon as it was closed, the door was sucked into place, with part of my nail still in between. Then without shouting, I pulled my finger out. It hurt a bit, so I wasn’t too worried. The parking place was pitch dark and I couldn’t see anything.

When we got to the restaurant, I noticed that my finger felt warm. When I looked down, my blood was everywhere, dripping from my fingernail. It turned out that when I pulled my finger out of the door, I also pulled my nail. So it was half way off and bled like hell!

I excused myself and told them I was going to look for a pharmacy to get a band-aid. At the pharmacy, they said I should go to a hospital. Then I got on a taxi, headed to the Singapore General Hospital, ER section. They put me in a waiting room with two other people. They also had funny and weird accidents. We chatted and laughed the whole night. One guy was kicked on the head during football match because he was bending down to tie shoe lace and also bled. One Indian girl got broken toes because her sister slammed a suitcase on her feet. And then myself with my fancy accident. We were the cheeriest lot in the whole hospital!

They made us waited for 4 hours. My accident happened at 8pm. When finally I got into surgery room, it’s almost 1am and the blood had dried out.

I was assigned to a young hand surgeon. He performed the surgery on my finger, took out the nail and stitched the wound so nicely. It is such a cool hospital with cool young doctors. It wasn’t expensive at all. But of course the waiting was a bit too much.

The nail grew back great four months after, just as he promised. Then I was given a Mercedes on the same month. Cool huh. What a coincidence!

Next year I am planning to slam my hand on a different car. Any idea what kind of car?

hardcore love

When I watch love movies, it makes me all warm inside. It ’shows’ that happy ending does happen. But … Whenever people share their thoughts and dissatisfaction on their marriages, I wonder what do we really want in our marriage? Maybe our unhappiness of our marriages are caused by love stories we read or watch.

It is by definition a union of two people. Even when we are alone by ourselves, we are constantly faced with battles within. Doubts are everyday life. Should I do this, or do that? What if I go now, then what will happen?

When two people merge, it’s like war every minute. Said or unsaid. I do admire marriage couple who stay together everyday, live together and work together.

After two years of marriage, I am still working on it. Sometimes it is quite impossible to know what he is thinking or what he wants me to think or do. When one of us got it wrong, it takes a lot of energy and emotion to explain or to make it right. It seems to me, people are less understanding and less forgiving when it comes to their loved ones.

So there are three things that hold true for me now.

Expectation is not good. It’s ok to expect. Don’t make it into obsession.

Compromise is the key. When it just seems unbearable, just compromise, as in turn blind eye and deaf ear.

Less spoken is less trouble. Our words are our tiger. Beware. Be cautious.

In the end, love movies are the one thing that corrupt us all. Happy ending is not that easy. It is hard work. ‘Happy ending’ is relative. It’s full of terms and conditions!

If we want the ‘happy ending’ a la chick flicks, we will suffer for sure!

christmas trees of 2007

One for home

One for office

One for shop

The next one is not mine, of course but it’s the most breath-taking. Comes with carol singers! – from my trip to Kuala Lumpur last weekend.

My favourite one at The Pavillion

f .. r .. i .. d .. a .. y

Random thoughts of the day

What’s happening with Blogger??? I just noticed that I couldn’t leave comments with my weblog information. Sweetisu said that she has to look for other ways to do it. Have you found it? How do you do it? - I tried again just now, it worked! Jennic, they heard you! -

Unspun says that Enda Nasution is the President of Indonesian Bloggers. Okay … Do we need a president? If we do, what does he do exactly? That’s a weird job. Did we elect him sometime in the past? I couldn’t remember doing that … When is the next election? I would like to nominate myself … - there is a correction on this subject by Unspun himself, please refer to the comment section -

I have no idea how to deal with RSS. Can somebody show me how please?

I finished season 2 of Heroes last night. In one seating. When’s the next season?? Hurry hurry ….. Sylar must be the creepiest character on TV ever! I think he is kinda cute, in the most scariest way.

Little Women is my most favourite book for the week. I was totally hypnotised by it. It is such a classic story. Most importantly, easy to understand for readers with mediocre knowledge of English (like me). Love it! Well, I haven’t exactly finished it yet, but I can’t wait. So I am fighting every urge not to jump to the last chapter of the book! What happened to Jo at the end?

X-L Community Continued

Since I first blogging around end of September this year (I was in Blogger – moved to WordPress around October), I can safely say that my most popular post is this. Weirdly, nobody leaves comment on the subject, ever! Except for kind LB, of course.   

After coming out from my hermit shell (10 day of blog-free), I checked my email and found this invitation to join the XL Community. Of course I joined, it is such an honour!

But I am not sure if the group will let me join when they find out that I am a size 2. It states very clearly that the members have to be around XL neighbourhood.

Nevertheless, thank you so much for inviting me.

Seven Weird Andies

I was tagged by Matilde more than a week ago. After the cold-turkey period of blogless – I did check for comments though .. I feel ready and fresh to complete the meme

Here are the rules:
Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself. Tag 7 random people participating in nablopomo at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I do a lot of weird things. I have tons of weird habits. So it is quite difficult to shift through those and wrote some of the least weird ones .. Here they come :

Movies and all

I like to watch tv shows – Grey Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, 24 all the way up to Seinfeld, Friends and other archaic shows like that. But I only watch them when my husband’s not home. So whenever he leaves, I go on dvd of tv shows’ marathons for days until I catch up with every single show.

Relaxing time 

My most favourite thing to do every night is getting snuggled up in my green chair (it’s kinda getting out of shape now) covered toe-to-neck in cotton blanket (which I have always brought with me every where I go) and reading my books.

Blaze from the past

I went partying constantly before I got married. After that, not even once I did that .. I am not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. If I look at the change of habit maturely, I would definitely say that I am growing up!

Love of life

I love everything about food. I love movies about restaurants. I love going to restaurants. I love reading cookbooks. I have the most cookbooks (even I don’t know that many people, but I can say that I own a lot than most people). That is a strange thing given that I don’t even cook.

Fashion stuff

As every other girl in the block, I like girly stuff. But I don’t get too excited about them. I could be as raggedy as backpackers and sometimes I dress up quite nicely to work. I like to be unpredictable.  

Bodily and baths

I am obsessed with personal hygiene. I take the longest showers and I like to spend on bath products. And I don’t like people who comment on that like … “do you really need all those?” I just like being clean and smelling great. Was that a sin?

Shoe fettish

I secretly wish I have bigger feet. My feet are so tiny, I had hard times getting nice shoes. So everytime I find some which fit me, I will go crazy.

Lastly, I might not tag 7 other people .. So anyone who feels like sharing weird personal stuff with people you hardly know, please do so. I would LOVE to read them!

No Blog Week is over, I think ..

I have not posted anything for 10 days. I am still here. Work has been bad.

There were so many cookie-and-bread-related problems to deal with. And I did lose my head a LOT of times.

Things are running smoothly, but getting busier everyday. People are very touchy. Everybody loses temper. Everybody snaps like cheese crackers.

But I am back. It’s much better to snap in blogsphere than in real life. So there will be more online snapping till the holiday season’s over ..