tango papa echo, charlie golf kilo

Currently stranded at TPE. Few minutes before leaving SFO I managed to tag 1.1.0 release for PhantomJS (lesson learned: never attempt a release few hours before boarding). Thanks to Ivan and Alessandro, few source tarballs and binaries are now ready.

It's been hectic days. 2011 WebKit Contributors Meeting was just over, it was fantastic and I got to meet and talk to a lot of WebKit rockstars. Parallel to that, my fellow brave Sencha lads finally unleashed The Quattro!

Next stop, also the final destination: CGK. Bracing for the impact of reverse culture shock...

manaus and bossa conf

Right now I am in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon, Brazil. Good weather, beautiful nature. Fresh tropical rain, feels just like home.

Yes, I am here for the (legendary) Bossa Conference '10 from the awesome INdT folks. I had delivered my talk, Redefining Mobile Graphics Stack this morning. I used the chance to preview (and got feedback) some of upcoming graphics example for X2 from Ofi Labs (what's X2? read the explanation), even straight from my N900, so just watch its git repository in the next few weeks. BTW, Radeon HD 3200 of my new toy and TV output of N900 worked out-the-box with the projector.

It is also nice to meet few INdT guys I knew, and get to know new folks as well. Since a few Trolls are also here, I also catch up (and share more jokes) with them. Gosh, feels like ages since I left Oslo.

This is my first visit to Brazil. Looks like it won't be the last time!

putu, kelepon, terang bulan

While enjoying this vacation, I managed to steal few hours to do some fun coding. Nothing spectacular, but it yielded something I will surely share in the near future. However, since I am still in the mood of bombing the planet again, here is another post with food pictures.

Something else we were glad to taste during our extremely short visit to Bandung were Putu and Kelepon, typically sold at the price of 1 EUR for 25 pieces. They are basically rice cake filled with palm sugar and served with grated coconut. Putu is steamed, while kelepon is boiled. The latter is also colored using pandan leaves.

While sampling culinary specialties means that we do not cook quite often, when the opportunity presents itself, it is of course a good feeling to eat something home-made once a while. Here is one: Terang Bulan (literally: bright moon). It is some sort of pancake, very similar to Martabak except Terang Bulan is filled with sugar, sprinkles, condensed milk, cheese, and the likes. Hence, it is also known as Martabak Manis (literally: sweet Martabak), a term that is somehow I dislike (because language-wise it is unnecessary as there exists a good name for that and thus it extends and pollutes the meaning of Martabak with a very weak reason).

The recipe? Check what this lady has posted. Terang Bulan is sweet and healthy (reduce the amount of sugar if in doubt), it makes for a good snack in the afternoon.

Last but not least: Eid Mubarak to everyone!

english vs indonesian

One thing which recently made it into my reverse-culture-shock impact list is the widespread use of incomprehensible (read: broken), mixed-language expressions, potentially due to many reasons (to name a few: innocent show-off, following the mainstream, or just trying to look more "educated"). It starts with an easy one, like denoting the printer cartridge types as "black" and "color", i.e. in English, although we have good Indonesian words for that ("hitam" and "warna", in case you can't recall). The worse part is yet to come, it kills me when someone starts to sprinkle English words in an otherwise perfect sentence, e.g. "tapi you mesti ngajak aku to follow your, ehm [can't find the English words], kegiatan, which is sebenarnya quite interesting". This wonderful fragment is ridiculously non-sense for both foreigners who never learned Indonesian and for my fellow countrymen who do not know English at all.

Of course it won't surprise you if I say that you can easily find flyers and other promotion materials exactly using the same pattern. Just today we found a state-sponsored, free Shopping & Travelling Guide booklet featuring dozens of pages with English headings. Again, the contents are written in Indonesian. This leads to a number of striking typos and mistakes, one of which is shown here:

I have nothing against foreign languages (I have my share by learning few of them), but I also still love my wonderful mother tongue, Bahasa Indonesia.

paris lisbon madrid

Finally I had a real vacation, albeit short. Like many typical holidaymakers, I decided to do a little tour passing three selected cities in Europe, at the same time also using the chance to practice light, one-bag travelling (with a great success, mind you!).

Paris can always make a good start. The target at this second visit to Paris was to enjoy it at night. After all, it is supposed to be la Ville Lumière (City of Light). However, a long walking tour during the day was still inevitable, as evidenced from the picture of Église Saint-Eustache above.

As for the food, we decided to try non-local cuisine instead. We dined at the nicely-decorated Restaurant Indonesia, one of two restaurants in Paris (the other one is Djakarta-Bali) serving authentic culinary experience from my home country. If you happen to be nearby, give it a try as the dishes were good and reasonably priced.

Lisbon is fabulous and rich with history. We managed to explore the downtown area on foot, enjoying the busy Marquês de Pombal, even walking up to the Castelo de São Jorge. However I feel that exploring the surrounding would have been much better with a car. The view of Lisbon from the castle was majestic, also from the dozens of the short alleys on the way up there (the photo above). Of course, passing Ponte 25 de Abril - the sister bridge of San Francisco's Golden Gate - both on the motorway and using the train, was also a wonderful experience. Due to our limited time, we had to skip some other tourist attractions. We already compiled a list of must-visit places for the future, in case we fly to Lisbon again.

Nevertheless we had the obligatory fantastic dinner with cod. In another occasion, a simplistic but enjoyable dinner buffet in a Churrascaria was also memorable. A short detour to the beach at midnight completed the unforgettable journey.

Madrid was very vibrant and dynamic. It is also quite warm (as expected) with the heat at noon being close to unbearable. I like the fact that it was still possible, even convenient, to sit on a bench even somewhere in downtown as long as it is still in the shadow. Unfortunately Madrid was defeated by Rio in the race for the 2016 Summer Olympics host. Otherwise it would have been extremely fantastic as we were there after the last round.

We did the usual sightseeing (on foot) - including the compulsory visit to Palacio Real - and other usual rituals: having chocolate con churros for breakfast, drinking horchata to ease from the heat at midday, as well as eating traditional paella (and fidueà) for the (very!) late dinner.

Madrid at night on the other hand is a bit problematic for me. Since I am not a nightlife type, I don't drink, and I can't stand the cigarette smoke, touring the city after sunset is practically a mild torture.

Next to visit (due in few days): Amsterdam and Munich.

paella de marisco

Also known as seafood paella, something we tried when we were in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Now I am motivated to cook it myself, sometime in the near future, in particular since I am also a fan of mussels.

it takes two to tango

sate kelapa

A dish that is on the prominent position of my must-eat list (when I am on vacation) is sate kelapa (or in its local variant known as sate kelopo). This is like the usual satay, except that it is sprinkled with coconut rasp (hence the name, kelapa is coconut) before being grilled, thus giving its distinctive, wonderful and appetizing smell.

You can find sate kelapa if you travel around Surabaya and perhaps other places in East Java. A portion of 10 pieces typically costs only 50 Eurocents. Served with lontong (bite-size compressed rice), with peanut-mixed-with-soy-bean sauce, you would never stop eating it. There was a time I had a double portion for breakfast, every single day in a week!

for the glorious nation

Approaching the Qt 4.5 release, in order to relax the atmosphere a bit, and while I was just back from vacation in Indonesia, last week I brought nice goodies to the office. Read what I posted to our internal list:

---

Subject: durian, for the glorious nation of Indonesia
Date: Tuesday 24 February 2009
From: Ariya Hidayat <ariya.hidayat@trolltech.com>

Executive summary: try durian candies I brought, find them on the desk in the 5th floor, next to the stairs.

Durian [1], an arguably very nutritious and delicious fruit, my all-time favorite snack, best things before sliced bread and LISP, is unfortunately forbidden to be carried in the flight, placing it in the same category as guns and drugs. Since I am not a brave as our Chief Troll (with his cheese adventure), instead of smuggling a large quantity of durians, cowardly I fall back to a simpler solution: durian (flavored) candies. For me, they taste fantastic (albeit not as heavenly as the fresh fruit, or when made into mixed drink [2,3]), but for most people, they stink, smell horribly, and taste disgusting.

When you start the losing fight with your stomach, when you count the minutes in the toilet, when your days in Emergency Room are almost over, now think about it: how do most Asian feel about European cheese? [4]

Now I am back on completing my patent application on "Method and Apparatus of Information Extraction from Combatants Using Exotic Tropical Fruit", before someone ratifies the counterpoint as an addendum to the Geneva Convention.

Enjoy the ride!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian
[2] http://flickr.com/photos/ariyahidayat/3293814359/
[3] http://flickr.com/photos/ariyahidayat/3294638128/
[4] Surprisingly, "durian" and "revenge" share a general theme: they are best served cold

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These candies of course can not reach the real taste of the fruit itself, especially when made into fresh drink like the picture here:

bravo bravo quebec

Travelling around Sidoarjo, East Java? Drop Steak Liana a visit (located across the train station) and enjoy its rather well-known roasted ribs (Indonesian: iga bakar) for less than EUR 2 per portion.

sweet potato vs steamed sponge cake

If you happen to visit Malang (East Java), do not skip the chance to visit Bakpao Telo right in Lawang, a small city just before Malang. The shopping complex is located conveniently on the main street, its enormous size makes it impossible to miss. What is unique there? A lot of assorted snacks (cakes, cookies, chips, and many more), made of highly-nutritious sweet potatoes, known here as ubi jalar or ketela rambat, often shortened to tela or telo, hence the name.

Needless to say, the following delicious steamed sponge cake (bolu kukus), which costs me a fortune (20 Eurocents or a quarter dollar), is my favorite.

knocked out

The beauty of taking a trip from/to South East Asia is simply its ridiculous journey. In the last 72 hours, I have been in 6 different airports, gone through 7 hours timeshifting, trapped 3 times in inhuman traffic jams, exposed to 40 Kelvin temperature drop, and of course enjoyed only sporadic in-flight sleeps and food.

For my aging, weak body, it hardly comes as a surprise that I am K.O.

scrolling through the paragraphs, clicking through the photographs

I heard that seven is a magic number. I am seeing the seventh winter in my life. How magical.

For roughly 300 weeks I stay in Europe already. And I will still be here for some time to come. But after reaching some of my goals, missing many others, I decided I will pay my home country a visit.

Bracing for the impact of reverse culture shock.

message from the pumpkins

Don't skip Viktualienmarkt, a 200-years-old food market in a square in Munich downtown (Viktualien apparently means food, or rather Lebensmittel in German). In those hundreds of stalls, you can find a lot of things, from fresh organic vegetables (and pumpkins, see above) to a wide selection of ready-to-eat seafood.

through my fingers into cold sunlight

"The view from up above is enchanting, especially the view from the Marienbrücke of the castle,..."

-- King Ludwig II

long weekend

Downtown is like a dead city.

Today is Allerheiligen (All Saint's day) and it's public holiday in some states in Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz und Saarland).

Of course, like many others, wisely I take vacation on Friday, thereby giving me a very nice and enjoyable long weekend.