christmas dinners, barbecues, rome, london, singapore, indonesia. no meat.

 i’m not saying it’s always easy but i have no problem sitting at a christmas dinner with beautiful smelling pinnekjøtt right in front of me and not eating it. i happily munch on buns with salad on them at barbecues.

MOH had a spinach and sausage pizza in rome and i said, ‘i’m so jealous, you have spinach on your pizza.’ i got my revenge later on with a beautiful dish of gnocchi with spinach so i was happy.

proper english breakfast in london. MOH had the whole package. i sat across the table from him with his bacon and sausages and thought my mushroom and eggs with toast were divine.

 i went to singapore with my mum and my sister. the first night we were there they ate rice with barbecued pork and i, having not eaten anything other than airplane food since midday, sat there with no food and still i wasn’t tempted.

i have gone home to indo three times since i stopped eating meat. the last time, in august, was brutal. my siblings were there so there was a lot of eating done. siomay, bakpao, martabak, kroket, jalangkote’, kompiah, fish soup with chicken broth (i know, how weird), ayam goreng, yum cha, pangsit, bubur babi just to name a few. not to mention mum’s cooking. trust  me, there were times when i was pretty sure i was insane for not eating meat. but still i didn’t eat any.

so all in all, i’m pretty good to sticking to vegies and seafood.

however.

there is this food that contains meat product that i still eat. i can’t give it up. i’m not willing to give it up. i don’t think i can give it up. good thing i never claim to be a vegetarian anyway.

here it is in all its glory.

my much loved indomie goreng. impossible to get in norway so we brought plenty from indo and my brother is going to bring us more from germany in december.

is there anybody out there who had tried indomie goreng and not like it? that’s not possible, is it?

we all have gotten socks for christmas presents from my MIL. obviously not as our main present, just a side present. but i can honestly said i’ve received socks as a christmas present. she always says as long as your feet are warm, you’re warm so it’s important to keep them covered. with proper socks. long socks, not ankle socks.

when my brother was here last winter, he didn’t wear socks at home either. there we were, two indonesians walking with bare feet and MOH had socks on his feet permanently.

well… i am cold. freezing more like. so i went to the attic and took one of the heaters down. then i dug around the socks drawer, found my pair of thick socks given to me by our neighbour and put them on.

we’re heading to days with single-digit temperature and freaking hell, it’s cold!

she was delivered through a c-section and three hours before her mum was scheduled to go into the surgery room, she sent me a blackberry message. she couldn’t sleep and, i guess because i was the only person she could think of who would still be awake at that hour, she messaged me.

and so we talked for hours until it was time for her to get ready for her c-section. her baby was born less than an hour after she said, ‘we’ll talk again later’. my workmates couldn’t believe she was on the phone with me until half-an-hour before her surgery.

less than a couple of hours after the baby was born, a picture of her was uploaded to our family blackberry group. comments started pouring in. this first photo was followed by a few other. you can literally see the change on the baby’s face from a few hours old to a couple of days old.

new mum sent a message to, i think, most of her contacts to announce the bub’s arrival. several family members promptly changed their profile picture with the baby’s photo.

i think it is so totally awesome that we get to keep each other so up-to-date with whatever it is happenning in our life. yes, there is always the internet but internet in indonesia isn’t exactly the most reliable thing. so to MOH and all those around me who like to mock me about my relationship with my blackberry… mock away, people, mock away.

workmate: have you done something different to your hair today?

me: no.

workmate: hmmm. your hair looks different. like you just been to the hairdresser.

me: nope. i washed it and let it dry.

tuesday.

another workmate: you look different today.

me: huh?

workmate: you’re… prettier.

me: awww, thank you. (playfully flicked hair and batted eyelashes)

workmate: are you in love or something?

me: hahaha

i need to trace back my steps and write down what i have done, eaten, drunk lately because obviously something magical is going on here. i just know i’m going to wake up tomorrow with zits and super frizzy hair as a punishment for being so vain.

me: yes.

workmate: how long have you been together with your husband?

me: seven years married this year. nine years together.

workmate: whaaat???  how old exactly are you?

me: old enough to have been together with someone for nine years.

MOH and i are celebrating our nine years together today. not bad, huh…

while on holiday, i enjoyed having long, unbroken nails and bruise-free body.

on the second day back, i got these:

i showed it to some workmates and they said, ‘welcome back!

i also have bruises on my right knee, left arm, right leg and tummy. it’s like i was never away.

it’s voting day here in norway. i planned to cast my vote online. some workmates told me they did that and i asked them how long can you vote online. probably until voting day, they said. huh! online voting closed on friday. voting day is today. thanks to them i had to dragged my backside to the local polling place, stood in queue for 10-15 minutes just so i can stand in the booth for one minute to give my vote. not. happy.

how is it possible that i have lived in norway long enough to be eligible to vote on the local election?

i love mooncakes. absolutely love them! my favouite is the black ones with the salted egg yolk in the middle. heaveeeeen….. my mum’s mooncakes (obviously) are the best. i’m not biased, truly. my mum make mooncakes for our big family and everyone always eats too much. she accept orders and got paid cold hard cash for her mooncakes. my brother’s friend, a chinese who grew up in china, got to taste them and he said they taste similar to the ones you get in china. so i’m not exaggerating when i say my mum makes great mooncakes.

anyway, this year, once again, i’m away from my family on the stuff-your-face-with-mooncakes day. luckily, my mum made some for us when we were home in indo just now. my sister too some to china, my brothers took some to germany and jakarta and i took some to norway. mine are in the freezer because i’m saving them as special treats.

my sister told me she has free today because it is the mid-autumn festival. we all went, you got a free day to eat??? yes, apparently. so i took out a couple of mooncakes from the freezer and today, i am eating mooncakes!

frozen and a bit squashed but oh-so-yummy.

for my birthday last year, i got the holiday in london and these extras. big presents, i know.

this year, i got this:

my old car got sick again and we decided enough was enough, we weren’t willing to paybig money for it to be fixed just to have it in the garage again a few months later. i’m a little bit sad because i absolutely love it but what you’re gonna do, eh?

i gotta say, i’m starting to like this whole birthday thing. or maybe i just like the pressies

i forgot to pay my mobile phone bill before leaving for the holiday so i came back to a letter asking me to pay within 14 it else they’d cut off my number. it was dated early august. the final day for paying came and went without me paying so guess what they did. they cut off my phone. i paid and got it back to live on tuesday. i went over five days without it and i now know why they call it crackberry. i was at work when i got it back and at lunch break, i did not talk to a soul because i was too busy with my phone. i have officially gone to the dark side.

2. no  bank card

while in indo i used my bank card the total of four times: atm in makassar, to buy headphones, atm in bali, to buy face wash. what can i say, i mostly lived on my parents’ money over there.

last day in indo. i wanted to take some money out just in case i had to pay excess luggage so there i stood in front of an atm machine at ngurah rai airport, my card already in the machine when my head suddenly went blank. i couldn’t, for the life of me, remember my pin code. i have tried for days to remember it and for some reason there is this set of number that came to me. again and again. i was so convinced that was it.

i went to the shop just to try it out. at the checkout, again, card at the ready, my head thought of this numbers but my fingers wanted to go somewhere else. i got so confused i kinda froze then said to the girl i’d be paying cash.

i decided that i’d e-mail the bank and ask them. MOH said maybe i could get my pin code from my internet banking. well, i could. why didn’t he think of this before? i had had to go around the house looking for my hidden cash just so i have some money in my wallet.

lesson learned: always checked that all bills are paid before going on a holiday and the internet is there for a reason, use it!

(and i figured out that pin code i was so sure of was the right one was actually my old pin code from my australian bank card. how i remember that and not my current one, i’ll never understand.)