by popular demand

It's not exactly when the fashion people release this stuff, but anyway. Here goes my Spring/Summer 2012 work.*

I'm currently working for what I think will be relevant next winter, in case anyone's interested. It's stretching my sensory imagination and logistical accuracy, because it's just so hot in Jakarta and it's no easy feat procuring materials and services. I've been keeping myself in a severely airconditioned room to compensate for the heat, although coming out is a bit like walking into the Tube :))

*have to put them up for a competition, wish me all the best of everything!

service cleaning complaint

Have you met my favourite sailor jumper?


A few days ago, I took it for a deep clean at a supposedly high-quality service shop. Took it back earlier tonight on my way out to town. I checked for tears and frays on the spot - the most serious of professional cleaning sins (as done by Aqualis on two of my dad's batik shirts) - and there were none. So I went out, came back home and hung it on my wardrobe door. That was, until I noticed something was amiss. The jumper went slightly pink, and its pilling had spread from primarily at the sleeve hems to all around the bust area.

So OK, in a badly lit distribution outlet (i.e. the one near home) it's difficult to discern whether there were any unwanted cleaning-triggered changes. But this jumper in my room? Of course I've seen it many times before. Being someone who has two crates of nearly-white fabrics in all sort of shades, and under constant lighting condition, of course I know there was some red-tone bleeding my jumper had picked up during the wash. To make it worse, the jumper's yarn is primarily cotton: colours only set into cotton when it's wash-treated at temperatures above 40 degrees, so it must have been chucked into the washing drum along with some other suspect-coloured garments. Knitted garments are not meant to be agitated when they are washed to prevent surface lint from forming; it happens more obviously on wool than cotton ceteris paribus... meaning it was agitated pretty bad while wet. To make it even worse, it wasn't supposed to even be washed in the first place - the care label says bloody dry clean it!

I think I will give the head office a call on this matter. If people in there are ashamed enough with the way they do business, they would compensate me. The supposed tenfold-of-cost compensation (as written on their bill) is not high enough as a deterrent for the company to do its work dilligently, nor will it get me any good replacement for the damage done. What I could do with it, though, is to pay for a nice dinner with my peer group and spread the word about the [unpleasant] experience.

Moral of the story: do NOT use Londré to clean any of your expensive knitwear.

(There, I've said it.)

Point #2: must get more cute Sonia Rykiel items to placate anger.

taking out nerves the jittery way

Fruit-shopping today yielded an interesting result. Check picture below.


I'm snowing myself under lots of work. It's the usual combination of pleasure derived from overachievement mixed with addiction to cramming-induced adrenaline. I find myself doing things like a gnat: jumping from reading a book to reading online articles to Facebooking, and checking my phone for missed calls when the buzzing noise happened to come from the aircon. In short, it's super jumpy mode, which is truly a reverse of 'the usual' blue screen of death™ panic variety.

Well I guess, when in doubt take care of yourself and brush your teeth.
I really, really miss eating biltong.

an entire month went by...

Apologies for the few-weeks' break. I'm blaming an excess surge of happy hormones and lack of machinists that make keeping my feet on the ground (and blog-posting) that little bit harder. I find myself staring onto the screen some nights, working out what to say (complaints? socio-economic observations? education?) whilst rolling about and giggling. Not exactly the first image one would come up with reading this blog, but it was truthful.

On the current affairs front, the delays involved with sprucing up the SEA Games complex reminded me of the Delhi Commonwealth Games fiasco last year. It made me think what is seriously wrong with this side of the world's propensity towards lax time-keeping in project management and execution? Does it have something to do with countries whose name start with I-N-D? How much of this inherent cultural laxness that resides in me that I can expel, reduce or control?
(I felt tempted to float the idea 'channel laxness towards other more lax-friendly areas in life', but laxness is like rotting teeth - not good.)

On the analogy front, I came up with a good phrase at the end of my gastro-intestinal problems. I haven't been in my physiologically prime since I came back: twisting my ankle, getting a cold, falling into a ditch... but nothing beats October's spectacle of eating cheap ice-cream. My sister suggested it; in the heat of the day (and worlds away from my favourite gelateria) it seemed like a good thing. Until I finished the two sticks I bought, realised they weren't that good to begin with, wondered why I compromised myself in the ice-cream stake... and got diarrhoea. It was a bit like going for one-night stands and getting a nasty VD. (Well, toldja.)
So I got an ice-cream maker at the end of the month and started churning my own stuff for personal consumption. My grandma's feedback was that 'it was cold and it melted'. Yes grandma, it's ice-cream.

On the socialising front, I'm spending a lot more time with my sister compared to what it was like between May and August. Also, I bumped into a certain Mr, which was enjoyable and quite funny towards the end. Maybe we can swap yams with gelati, or even do a yam-flavoured collaboration.

(If my dad asked to do me a gelati flavour I'd do cassava leaf, in honour of his fondness of the stuff.)

Anyway, more serious posts coming up. I've got a teaching gig starting in early December, I've gone through each subject's syllabus, and I'm doing prep work for them. Stay tuned for actions from the classroom front, on earning a 'Miss Killer' moniker without creating any mutiny, running a workshop and heavy-duty socialising. Challenging days ahead!

€93 shipping fee

Invoices had just started coming in. And with such a grand example of sum one is likely to forfeit for one-time shipping, it's high time to get a courier account.

Reading contracts in Indonesian doesn't come as naturally to me.
Talk about sounding snobbish; such a fact can be 'read' in many different ways depending on the reader's state of mind. It's just because my brain finds it easier that way.

more to learn

The irrefutable proof of one's mastery of foreign language is being able to complain about a problem and bitch about it fluently. Proper slangs and all.

Unfortunately my French classes in high school didn't cover this topic.

just quick, generally

It's Paris time for me.

Today, I came to a particular company's stand in search of a particular fabric. I've bought from [let's call it] Company K before, so I know how it works and I was a lot more at ease with myself. I had the sheer luck of being served by Company K's director (again); now he has a bigger stand than the one I visited two years ago.

I'm not surprised he did not recall me at first because: (a) I did not talk much with him two years ago - someone Japanese did the job for me (b) we didn't order a shipping container full of fabric so we were pretty negligible (c) I neither had a spunky hairstyle nor wore an outfit sufficiently memorable enough, and (d) the made-up company/label name back then was probably pretty hard to remember.

Anyway, we talked quite a bit and hit a rapport. I'm alright in dealing with おじさん and older people in general. The label's name, which is real this time around, is more memorable I guess. Then I left, went round other booths etc, went to the station to head back to town and gazed at the train network map....... until I heard someone say, "hey number one!"

Yes, it was Mr Company K president.
(I quite like him, actually. Not in that way, but in a platonic easygoing way.)

Later on (after I've had my fill of map-gazing) I caught up with him and another man he seemed to know on the platform. So to cut the story short, we all chatted, got into the crowded train and traded stories one to another. It turned out to be very fruitful, I got asked to share my views on tricky issues I never thought anyone would ask me on a train (religion/faith), I got to share why I choose to live thrifty (to use up the cash on good things of course), I got to retort an offhand command made in a language I did not master in that very language I did not master ("うそ," "そうでない") (that was gold), I got to meet someone whose body language reminds me of someone I knew (I was quite amused actually), and I had a very nice train journey back to town.

It was a very good day, a productive one, and one I actually like. I'm glad I have the opportunity to create new connections and strengthen existing ones. The experience contrasts with traveling with friends who keep company and take your silly pictures. Sometimes traveling alone is not a bad thing because it makes me reach out to others I wouldn't, had I got people I already know around to chat with.

Also, knowing more foreign languages is good, because being able to work out what other people are talking about is helpful. Especially in my line of work where a simple garment can have its components sourced from four different countries.

Which means, tomorrow is a long day for me because I am running out of business cards and I need to get more printed, pronto.

Big P.S.
Asking for things to be shipped to Indonesia is sometimes a disadvantage as I come across companies who are very wary of sending things to anywhere east of the Bosphorus (or getting less than 300 metres, or actually having dared to approach them.) However, with it comes the fun of explaining 'why' and proving that the inside of my head is genuinely not a bad copy of someone else's.

P.P.S. this post says plenty about the ilks and vagaries of Eurostar travel. I second it.