ngerujak/sour mango party

That is my friend making me rujak mangga or mango chilli salad.. yummy!!!

What is RUJAK????
Rujak is a classic Indonesian fruit salad of mixed tropical fruits, palm sugar, chilies and tamarind sauce, and in Bangka it is added with shrimp paste or in local language it's called terasi udang, giving the dish a spicy, sweet and sour taste.

Why we made rujak mangga?
Because my land lady has this mango trees which is now in harvest time. She give the fruits away to us, so we did that little party yesterday.
It was so sour

wrong image of the mayor

A picture speaks thousands words. But, this picture speaks so wrong ideas. In the first pict, the Mayor of the Pangkalpinang look as if he laughs at the poor lady who lays in bed, in fact, he doesn't. I forget why he laughs, what jokes he laughs about, but importantly it is not harmful jokes.

The Mayor is on visit to an opening haemo-dialysis clinic.

marine leech

I forgot the name of this kind lady..
She came along down to Bangka from Jakarta to collect this marine leeches. She said, marine leeches are very useful in Chinese medication. I don't know how until I browsed on wikipedia just now. Here are some information I gathered:

The majority of leeches live in freshwater environments, while some species can be found in terrestrial[2] and marine environments, as well. Most leeches are hematophagous, as they are predominantly blood suckers that feed on blood from vertebrate and invertebrate animals.[3] Almost 700 species of leeches are currently recognized, of which some 100 are marine, 90 terrestrial and the remainder freshwater taxa.

Leeches, such as the Hirudo medicinalis, have been historically used in medicine to remove blood from patients.The practice of leeching can be traced to ancient India and Greece, and continued well into the 18th and 19th centuries in both Europe and North America. In modern times, the practice of leeching is much rarer and has been replaced by other contemporary uses of leeches, such as the reattachment of body parts and reconstructive and plastic surgeries and, in Germany, treating osteoarthritis.

Medicinal use of leeches

The European medical leech Hirudo medicinalis and some congeners, as well as some other species, have been used for clinical bloodletting for thousands of years. The use of leeches in medicine dates as far back as 2,500 years ago, when they were used for bloodletting in ancient India. Leech therapy is explained in ancient Ayurvedic texts. Many ancient civilizations practiced bloodletting, including Indian and Greek civilizations. In ancient Greek history, bloodletting was practiced according to the humoral theory, which proposed that, when the four humors, blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile in the human body were in balance, good health was guaranteed. An imbalance in the proportions of these humors was believed to be the cause of ill health. Records of this theory were found in the Greek philosopher Hippocrates' collection in the fifth century BC. Bloodletting using leeches was one method used by physicians to balance the humors and to rid the body of the plethora.

The use of leeches in modern medicine made its comeback in the 1980s after years of decline, with the advent of microsurgeries, such as plastic and reconstructive surgeries. In operations such as these, problematic venous congestion can arise due to inefficient venous drainage. Sometimes, because of the technical difficulties in forming an anastomosis of a vein, no attempt is made to reattach a venous supply to a flap at all. This condition is known as venous insufficiency. If this congestion is not cleared up quickly, the blood will clot, arteries that bring the tissues their necessary nourishment will become plugged, and the tissues will die. To prevent this, leeches are applied to a congested flap, and a certain amount of excess blood is consumed before the leech falls away. The wound will also continue to bleed for a while due to the anticoagulant hirudin in the leeches' saliva. The combined effect is to reduce the swelling in the tissues and to promote healing by allowing fresh, oxygenated blood to reach the area.

The active anticoagulant component of leech saliva is a small protein, hirudin. Discovery and isolation of this protein led to a method of producing it by recombinant technology. Recombinant hirudin is available to physicians as an intravenous anticoagulant preparation for injection, particularly useful for patients who are allergic to or cannot tolerate heparin.

 Hmm.. so it is apparently used to suck blood on patient. But I still can't understand why that old lady have to dry the leeches, will it not may be able to kill them? Don't we need the leeches to be alive if we want them to suck the blood??
*trapped in complete confussion*

vision board

Hi!
I have spent the past three hour staring at my laptop, gathering pics from Polyvore to create my electronic Vision Board!!!
Fyi: now I hurt my eyes now

So, what is vision board??? Vision board is my visual representation of what I want to attract in my life. It's some kind of my wish list to achieve in life. If you can't make it online because you don't have the Polyvore account, you can simply gather a collage of pictures, words, and phrases from your stack of old magazine.

Well, to me, making a vision board means to reminding me where I want to go and what I want to get out of my live.

Well, actually, you have to place your vision boards somewhere you will see it often like in your office, bedroom or on the fridge. Why? Because... by looking at the vision board often, it will help you to keep your goals in the front of your mind so you stay on the path to living out your dreams. But guess it's enough for me at the moment.

See? Think it this way: YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF!

Here are the explanation about my vision board:
1. As you may already have noticed, I want to be happily married. With a humorous and loving guy like Michael Cera, definitely!
2. Having some kind of cute little girl who wants to wear that purple over-sized tutu.
3. Went to sing a long on a Radiohead concert.
4.  I will do good in my job so I can travel around the world to cover story, France, UK, India, Middle East, Africa, America, Australia, will I travel around.
5. I will love and do more for my mom and family.
5. I'll get my doctorate in literary studies.
6. I'll finally be good at photography which is now I'm suck at.
7. I'll live more healthy, I do yoga, swimming, and I will be able to cook, healthy food!!
8. I'll party my life! Laugh more and love more. And hate less.
9. I'll have a nice house in a city and a nice car *I'll be able to drive*
I don't like to live in village or sub urban. I want to live in a big city. I love BIG big big city!! I want to raise my kids in a city! City is the best!!
10. Finally, I;ll be SUPER GIRL mentally and spiritually. I'll be happier and acceptance. I will not complain even for my dark skin.
11. I'll grow my hair and dress bohemian and love like hippies.
12. It's gonna be so adventurous as my life will be so helpful and meaningful for others.

So. That's all my VISION BOARD story. Wish it can come true. Just let's wait and see what will happen next in the very soon future..

Parai Beach!!

Finally I can post some of the pictures on our trip to Parai Beach in Bangka Island. This is one of those rare happy moments I have in this island, so.. enjoy!

Glare in the sun with Thomas

The rocking pose

I'm a mermaid, hahaha...

I really look like an island dweller, so burnt and dirty

A friend got me to pose with his cigar, well I didn't really smoke it, Mom!

With my colleagues

Me with another colleagues, one of them is my current boss here in this island.

fatthin san shrine slashed kuil tapak dewa

Look at these cute creatures!!

I met these two little cute and loving which is naturally enemies animals on the stairs way up to Budha's statue in Fathin san shrine. They were so cute, the love between these two so heart-warming. Look at how the mother dog breast feed the little fragile kitten??

Is it possible that this kitten is biologically the mother;s dog offspring????!!!

Maybe this is the kitten's Pappa

The grand Fathin San shrine

Kuil Fathin San or Fathin San shrine located at the Bukit Betung, Sungai Liat Betung Bangka regency. This is a Buddhist shrine whose followers are Chinese citizens on the island. Because it is located on the hill, so people have to climb the stairs to get up there.

When I got there, the smell of burned rakes began to smell along the stairs that I went through, this place is decorated with Buddhist statues, there is also man-made cave with natural springs flowing from the mouth of the dragon, said to the water coming out of the dragon can make people forever young.

Burning rakes

This is the view you can see once you get at the peak of the hill

 

The mighty dragon with the mighty power drool, hihi..

Great wall.. 
I'm in China! I'm in Bangka? I'm in China? I'm in Bangka! Oh NOOOO!!!

night walkings on pangkalpinang

so here I enjoy some night here in Pangkalpinang, not quite grand obviously, but.. to get away my loneliness is enough for me..

Lapak kueh.
Lapak kueh is what you see on these picts. It sells kueh or cake and pempek. Pempek is a savoury fishcake delicacy. Pempek made of fish and tapioca. Pempek is served with a dark, rich sweet and sour sauce called kuah cuka or kuah cuko (or vinegar sauce). Yummy!!

pempek in various size and shapes

Pempek goreng, fried pempek with vinegar sauce

teh tarik

teh tarik and chocolate toast at windy night

tatochi don't like me

This baby girl is Tatochi. Well, her real name is Nisa. She's a daughter of my colleague. She's so cute and mostly afraid of me. Whenever I get near her, she always restless and cries. It can't be happening! Kids love me, they used to like playing with me. I'm always kids' favorite! But Tatochi is an anomaly. She doesn't like me that much.

I used to babysit many of my little cousins and they do like me, and even now, they still nominate me as big sist cousin favorite ever. And when I part-ed job at Kumon, kids liked me. I was some of kids fave mentor. Well, all good sides always come with bad sides, when I gave private lesson, some kids also hated me as I tended to lose my temper when I teached them
But, it doesn't matter, the point is.. most of the time kids love me. And I love kids too *those who love me back, even those who don't they should still be cute!

So on one fine morning, I get a chance to tame her little terrified heart and play with her and take her, here are the picts:

See those expression on Tatochi's face? That little girl is really don't like me. It seems like she was terrorized by my presence and she tried to avoid being around me. She even do not want to look at the cam, maybe for her it's such an embarrassment to be with me. Oh Tatochi, am I that bad in front of your eyes?

But why Tatochi? why you can't like me? WHYYYY??!!! I can do anything for you, just LIKE me, like me!!!