A friend told me a couple of weeks ago “I don’t like to cook, I’m just a picky eater!” At the time I thought she was being exclusive, that nothing out there is good enough for her. But then I figured there are so many benefits to cooking yourself at home.
- You save money.
- You eat healthier foods (should you choose so).
- You get that privacy of a one-on-one dinner with your loved one.
- You don’t have to drive.
Ok so is was around dusk I got hungry. Normally Vie would be in the kitchen cooking but today she was napping. I opened the fridge and out of nowhere took out some chicken, tomatoes and butter. What to do? Hmpphh I’m not a cook. I looked at the spice rack and found some oregano, garlic powder, chili powder and olive oil.
So here we go. I cut the tomatoes into tiny little pieces and I beat it to a pulp. I put water in the pan, threw the chicken in with some oregano leaves and some weird looking chilies I found on the kitchen counter and let it boil for some time. When the chicken is cooked I took them out and put them aside. Took another pan, well.. a skillet, melted the butter in it and added some olive oil. When the two fats heated enough to make a weird looking mix I threw the chicken and the pulpy tomatoes in. Sprinkled more oregano on it, added salt, the chili powder and garlic powder and mixed them good. Took them out, put them on plates with some garlic bread I magically made with my other hand while I was cooking and Vie woke up. We had dinner and surprisingly none of us got sick.
I thought it was all right. Vie thought it was good. I think she was just loving me. Either way I need to perfect it for next time, so until then I’m labeling this little invention, Chigano.
We’re in Jakarta in transit to Bali after a week visiting my folks in Bandung and taking Lee to the volcano. We went to the mall today and I had a good sit down with Roy while Vie walked around the shops. Coming home she told me to close my eyes and in my hand she put down a strange thin long black box. When I opened my eyes there sat in my palms a brand new MacBook battery. She said it was an early birthday present because I needed it. My battery went bust about a year ago due to the Bali heats because I always kept my laptop on almost 24/7. So I have been immobile for a year and she figured it was time to liberate my workspace again.
Sometimes I wonder what I did right in the past to deserve this kind of love. It’s not the price of the battery that touched me, but it’s the careful thought behind her actions.
It’s been a while since my last update and a lot has happened in my life in the past month. New Year’s Eve was pretty much uneventful, but we did have a great time at Jewel’s place. Jewel is our new friend and she’s a teacher at an international school here. After the New Year’s the days crept slowly then it was our wedding.
Yes I finally married my lovely Vie, after 3 wonderful years with each other. We finally pulled everything together and threw a small wedding in Nusa Dua on January 11th, which was also her birthday.
Before, during and after the wedding, in a span of 2 weeks time, we had a surge of friends staying with us. That kept us busy and knocked our routines off track for a while. Two of our friends, Jen and Momo had their DSLRs with them. Jen had a D3000 and Momo had a full frame bugger, the D700. Playing with their cameras sort of resurrected the frozen photographer in me that’s been sleeping for years. After they left I started reading up photography in order to relearn the trade. I wanted to start taking pictures again.
Then something hit me. My Canon PowerShot S3 IS wouldn’t allow me to take the kind of photos that my friends DSLRs did. Tough. I’ve always wanted a DSLR, so much to the point I forgot about it because I didn’t have money to buy one in the past. So the beast came back, and the craving began. I started nagging to Vie for the camera. At first we were both hesitant because we were quite broke after the wedding and a new DSLR camera would shoot our budgets through the roof. But after days of sleepless nights, I decided I really wanted it and Vie decided to support my new found passion. This is why I married her.
I came down to Nikon D90 and the 50mm f/1.4 lens. It’s something good enough to contain my growing needs for a while without making an overkill. Ordered it online and got an email from tech support the next day that they’re out of stock. Great. So I called my friend Cin from my hometown and turned out he’s a photo nut head too and he offered to help me get the camera and the lens from a local shop before I even asked. Two days later, my D90 arrived in the mail.
I sold my Canon PowerShot S3 IS to my friend Joe, along with a 2GB SD card, batteries and charger, for $200. It’s like getting a cash back coupon for my D90. I also reactivated my flickr pro account, and started fooling around with it again.
I don’t know what it is about me but it feels like my inner child is coming out and I really want encourage it. Who knows I might get lucky with photos and it could work as an outlet of my constantly spinning mind.
I trust that you’ve all had a great start this year. I plan to turn this into some sort of a photoblog so I have something to post more frequently that doesn’t take too much efforts to publish. It will also once again give you a window into my simple life here without draining too much thought.
when i come to think about web years, this domain is pretty ancient. i really should do something about this, something useful that can contribute to the greater good. whatever it is.
quick update of my life. as of this month we have moved. again. we are now only 15 minutes away from the airport and about 20-30 minutes away from kuta, depending on traffic. i have also been coughing for a month, thanks to whatever is flying around in the air, married with my lack of rest and my loads of stress. this is about the end of it though so i’m good.
on another note, the network has been taking a lot of hits lately. first traffic has become very unstable. then some third party script provider decided to close down business which caused my sites to hang for two days. within which none of my bloggers decided to let me know so i lost both traffic and money until i personally noticed. moral of the story, when you want something done right, do it yourself. which just happens to contradict with what i’m looking into right now.
outsourcing my life.
we’ll talk more about that later.
how have you guys been?
in the beginning there was the cloud. then the cloud evaporated and a new cloud formed above it. and the new cloud is.. *drum rolls* zumodrive!!
the idea is the same, super awesome cloud storage accessible from anywhere, regardless of device or storage space. in simple terms, your 16gb netbook could tap into a mammoth of a 250gb file stash, and your 8gb pda or smartphone could stream 500gb of videos.
it’s all free up to 1gb (the other cloud offered 2gb free) and monthly subscriptions start at $2.99. see how it all works after the jump.
update: apparently dropbox syncs, zumo doesn’t. while zumo allows you to free your local harddrive and stream from your online storage, with slow internet connections this is an overkill. so i’m sticking with dropbox since it allows me to have offline copies of all my files and only sync the incremental differences between my other computers and devices.
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JErm is a web designer and an ex-9-to-5-er semi-retiring in Bali. He runs a small 
