The period before and during the first days a woman gets her period every month is sometimes filled with negativity. I don't get that often but when I do, I get a real bad one.

I've been very upset with Mr Boyfriend. As other girls may have experienced, the period of the period makes us very emotional and every small thing appears big and life is just full of drama. But this has started even before that period of the period. Anyway, I'm not going to go into details of what our problems are - or may I say MY problem since he doesn't seem like he feels it but I just feel..... lonely. And worse, neglected. Again, I may not be necessarily intentionally neglected, but that is what I've felt. I guess I just did not expect that he was a real hardworking person who would be willing to spend the entire day and night at the office than be with me doing the boring stuff like watching TV. I guess I did not expect that his concept of having fun with friends always involved so much alcohol and empty conversations till dawn or worse, morning. Empty here goes only for me since all those convos were in French. I guess I was being too individualist for having fed up with being ignored (or not involving myself) in the conversations that were mostly in French at dinners with his bosses and workmates and so I pulled myself away from it, came to an empty and cold bed and left him grab his own fun until the morning came. Seriously, I didn't give a damn if it happened once in a while. But I am frustrated that it's starting to become a habit. And oh how much I hate being a dramatic nagger. But should I shut up and keep it to myself until I get crazy? No, I just had to blurt it out at the worst timing and ruined everything. Maybe not everything but I feel like shit.

At these times, I'd like to run to friends, or whoever that would listen, but I just realised that I had made myself exclusive in my circle of friends this past couple of years. Who do I want to share things with except Pam and Fabio? The others may have forgotten my name and deleted my number from their list for having been idle and not in touch for so long.

Of course there's family. But my only family here in Bali - my sister Ita - has her own problem and worries. And the fact that we don't live close to each other makes it even worse to have a nice communication. I'd like to call my mother, but the last time we were on the phone she was upset with me for not supporting her financially as regularly as I did before due to the instability of the early stage of my photography business.

Negativity.... negativity it is when a woman has her period. Plus fucking situational occurrences. Plus fucking thieves.

Yeah, one of my motorbike mirrors was stolen today when I parked it in front of Fabio's house.

Such a perfect day.

I have decided to make an annual contest, starting this year, by selecting one photo I made of EVERY one of my clients the year before; in this case 2009. There will be two winners; i.e. one of the last year’s clients who gets the most votes and one random VOTER. Prize for the winners of this contest? A free session with me this year entitling the winner to run the next year’s contest again with it + 20 hi-res digital files + 1 canvas print (mounted).

HOW IT WORKS:

  • Check my facebook fan page for the candidates’ photos.
  • Vote your favourite photo(s) by clicking the thumb-up (like) button. Of course to do this, you will need to be the fan of the page.
  • You will be given a month to vote starting from today so ask as many of your friends to vote for you if you are one of the candidates.
  • The contest ends on May 12, 2010.
  • The winners of the contest (2009 candidate + 1 voter) will be announced on May 18, 2010.
  • For winners outside Surabaya and Bali, travel and accommodation fee of the photographer is to be paid by the winners.

This contest is ANNUAL. So to reserve your place as a candidate in 2011, book your session with me this year ASAP.

I was assigned to write an article for Aquila - a new magazine for modern Muslim women in Asia recently. I was asked to write two articles, but due to the ridiculous tight deadline they gave me, I had to drop the other one or I wouldn't make it at all.

Anyway, I was happy to take up the challenge since the issue I had to write was interesting; i.e. Muslim comedians. I had to go through YouTube blogs to see the videos of these amazing comedians and found that some of them were really such quality, honest comedians! My favourite is Baba Ali. I am not going to explain it here thoroughly but when it does come to print, I'll put the writing on this blog.

However, while in the process of making the article, I was online on facebook on the other tab, and an old acquaintance was congratulating me for the Good Friday.
I haven't talked to her in a while and I was still in the research period to build the article, so chatting with her was not a disturbance.

It started to disturb me, however, when she knew that I was writing for Aquila, she said:
"Sorry to ask this, but have you converted to Islam?"

I said, "Did I have to? If tomorrow I wrote about Balinese Hindu, would you think I'd converted to Hindu?"

She replied, "Well, no, but last time I checked, you were still Christian."

Me: "AND?"

She: "Well, why would a Christian write about or for Muslims? You know that they are anti-Christians!"

Me: "Says who? You? Obviously you don't know too many Muslims."

She: "Most of the Muslims in Surabaya are anti-Christians!"

Me: "That proves it again that you don't know anything about them. I have a lot of Muslim friends, since I should remind you that unlike you, I'd always gone to public schools before university that 90% of the students were Muslims. And hardly 5% of them had extreme belief in their religion. I must even say that over 50% are moderate and the rest doesn't even practise it at all. And even the ones who do practise it (praying 5 times a day and fast without interruption during Ramadhan) do NOT hate Christians."

She: "Really?"

Me: "Of course! It is so unfair for you, or anyone else to stereotype Muslims as such just because of what a few of them did. Give it some thought and DO mingle and befriend some of them. You'll see that what I say has a lot of truth in it."

--

If you think the way she does, it is time for you to go out and find some Muslims and see if they are Christian haters like what you think.
I must say that the vacation this time involves quite a lot of sporty activities. We go snorkeling every single day - normally after brunch - and when we are bored we take our rented bicycle to the centre of the town, which is actually not very far but enough to make us all sweaty.

Yesterday (day 2) we rode the bikes literally around the island. It is a small island anyway. Can't say how long exactly we had the tour since we stopped every now and then for a photo session or a drink. They say it takes 2-hour walk to go around Gili Trawangan, but we probably took more than that.

There are paths by the beach that surround Gili Trawangan. But not all of them are paved or cemented. Many times we just had to get off the bike and push it through the sandy path. I felt that this was harder than the act of biking itself. However, it was fun. And with all the energy that we spent, I'm curious why I haven't lost a kilo by now. hihihi...

Due to the location of our secluded hotel and with all the sporty activities we do at the day time, we don't normally have much energy left in the evenings. We would go to the nearest restaurant or even the hotel restaurant for dinner and then watch movies/TV series that Vincent downloaded and saved in his laptop.

It is indeed different than our wild vacation in Gili last year. But I enjoy it very much anyway.

Tonight, however, I'm wearing a flowery dress and sitting at the heart of the town and ready for a less quiet night than before!
Holiday season (for the Hindu's: Nyepi) has arrived. My boyfriend and I are having a four-day vacation at Gili Trawangan, a small island near the mainland Lombok island.

I've been here a lot of times, but with Vincent this is the second time. However, it was the first time we took a speedboat, though. It cut the long journey (4-6 hours by ferry + 1 hour road trip + 30 minutes small boat) to a mere one-hour rough sea trip. Gilicat at the moment charges each passenger Rp 600,000 for a one-way ride. But since Vincent is the employee of Bali Autrement, we've got return tickets for free (yay!).

The fact that it was quick was super nice. But I felt like being a poor sardine in a can that was being shaken all the time. Both Vincent and I took 3 pills for rough journey and I normally don't get seasick/landsick/airsick, but still....

Amazingly they said that the sea was calm and that it was a smooth journey.
S-m-o-o-t-h..... If that was smooth, I hope the journey back home is going to be like that or better.

One thing I learnt though, at the speedboat (especially a smaller one) it's better to take the back side since the front one gets rougher bumps. I banged my head on the seat several times.

Nevertheless, we are on this beautiful island, in a hotel in the quieter side where water is not salty like the other guesthouses here. The hotel - Aman Gili - faces the calm sea where is the spot of the snorkeling centre. It is not near from the madness but with a rented bicycle (Rp 60,000 a day) it takes only 10 minutes to get socialized or high (marijuana is sold pretty freely here despite Indonesian government's war against drug).

Warning: I saw a police chopter flew twice around the island. When I asked the hotel staff, they said that there was a drug raid 7 months ago.

Photos to come later. I'm at this "Warung Bule" by Villa Ombak and did not expect they provided laptops for customers who wanted to get in touch on the internet. I'm using the opportunity to check my email and blog, but I am not equipped with my card reader.

Till later.

I was feeling adventurous when I visited the nearest traditional market near my new house in Kerobokan. Many fresh fruits of all kind are sold there, including the dragon fruit (buah naga). The I-think-I-know-this-but-I've-never-tasted-it-before fruit was tempting me to buy it. I asked the seller how it tasted. And quickly she said, "Sweet." Then she looked back to her mate and asked her, "It is sweet, right?"

Okay, that was not exactly convincing.

And then she suggested me to buy one and try it myself. Apparently one dragon fruit was quite big and heavy and after scaling it, she charged me Rp 6,000 for one piece. After buying a kilo of srikaya (sugar apple) for Rp 7,000, one single piece of dragon fruit felt expensive. But I bought it anyway and regarded it as the cost of an adventure. The dragon fruit does have an interesting colour and wicked skin texture though.

First experience eating the glorious dragon fruit:
Apart from its bold appearance, the white fruity flesh and its small peeps taste somewhat low key, and not in a bad way. It is almost sweet but not sour at all, which is perfect for my taste. Moreover, it is rich of dietary fiber, calcium, and Vitamin C. Researches found that it is also good to help control levels of glucose blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes. Some people also believe that the dragon fruit is useful for those suffering from high tension.

With all the advantages offered and given, it suddenly doesn't feel that expensive anymore.

All images are copyright of Carla Ardian Photography.
Julie & JuliaI am not much of a movie/TV watcher. I'd rather spend my time taking photos outside or inside, or face my laptop and do some editing on the photos I have taken OR lie down reading one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks and ponder what to cook for dinner. But when I watched this year's grammy award - and really only about 15 minutes of the whole lengthy event - I fell in love with the way Meryl Streep took the award.

I did not see much of its trailer either. When I finally decided to buy the DVD, I had no idea what the movie was all about. As I said before, watching movies is not in the list of my most passionate things to do. SO, I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a movie of two different personalities of two different times, and how their lives resembled each other in their passion about cooking - which so happens to be one of my passions too!

Julia Child was an eccentric cheerful woman married to Paul Child, an employee of the United States of America embassy. Her journey in cooking started out when Paul was posted in Paris. She was fascinated about basically everything: the food, the market, even the people! She took her first French cooking class because she was bored and had nothing to do. Later on, the fact that most of French skilled chefs/cooks were men triggered her competitive mind to kick their arrogant asses that women can take part of the professional French cooking too.

Years after, when Julia's books had been published, and republished, one of her biggest fans, Julie Powell, felt like she had never achieved anything because she had never finished anything that she had started. She worked in a cubicle of a government office and daily received complaining calls from the 9/11 tragedy. She felt that her life was worthless and with the help of her loving husband, Eric, she started out a blog which recorded her Julie/Julia Project. The goal of this baby project of hers is to try out every recipe in Julia's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" book in one year. That was 536 recipes to try out in 365 days. She formerly started the project for herself. But after a while she gained popularity and had a number of fans who supported her through the project. Even the New York Times and the other news agencies were trying to interview and feature her!

So anyway.... I'm giving this movie a 4.5 star for the excellent acting of Meryl Streep and for reminding me that my blog has been deserted for months and that there are so many great recipes out there to try out!

I am now going to open Jamie's Ministry of Food cookbook and I suggest you to take a look on Julie & Julia trailer below.