Out and About

This post could also be entitled "Miscellaneous." It includes a variety of topics.

Sometimes you forget about American holidays while living here. It's nice when a mall puts out some seasonal decorations like this Halloween display at an area mall.

We are already seeing some Christmas items showing up in the Ace Hardware and I'm wondering if it is too early to put up my Christmas tree(s). Note: The trees are still not up!

A development group is planning on building a new city considerably east of here. There are plans for rail systems that will connect this new city in the future but I don't believe anything is really in the works yet. I have no idea on the timeline but I'm sure this won't all be completed during our stay.  They did, however, top off one tower recently so apparently they started building this quite a while ago. The new city's name is Meikarta. According to the advertisements there will be schools, hospitals, hotels, multi-level roads, an Indonesian Silicon Valley, an international convention center, public transportation, parks, and all the recreation you could possibly want.

The website states:

Meikarta surpasses anything this country has ever seen, epic in its scale and vision as a truly integrated city of the future. Not only does Meikarta redefine what a modern city should look like and feel like, it sets the new standard for a world city in Southeast Asia and beyond.

With a total development of 22 million square meters [~85 square miles], Meikarta has more than enough room to expand and grow. This perfect balance of space and form is a hallmark Lippo Group development, just what you’d expect from Indonesia’s premier property developer.

Underpinned by Rp 278 trillion [$ 20.5 million US] in direct investment, Meikarta is a 500-hectare [1,236 acres] development with 100 hectares [247 acres] of open green space, 250,000 units of prime residential property [all tall apartment towers I believe] and 1,500,000 square metres  [16 million square feet] of prime commercial space.

A local Lippo mall has dedicated most of the open space on the entry floor to promoting Meikarta.

You can put down Rp 2 million [$150US](fully refundable) to secure yourself some space! I will be watching this develop. If you wish to learn more about this giant project, just Google it.  

I inherited a peace lily from a friend who was downsizing from a house to an apartment 2 years ago. If I remember correctly, it did bloom a few times when it was first on our apartment balcony. Then I put it in a larger pot. The pot was small and I thought it would probably get knocked over by the high winds we get. It never bloomed again until a couple of weeks ago. There are 2 blooms! 

In the same mall as the Meikarta displays, I noticed this sign on a juice stand. Cute. "Saving good people from bad juice."

Lastly, a couple of comments on nature of late. Here is a recent storm photo. We have entered the rainy season but it hasn't rained that much and we haven't had any serious flooding issues yet. We do see some interesting skies. It often appears that a giant black umbrella cloud is being held over the business district where we live. Of course, it is raining under the big cloud "umbrella." B comment - this was taken at 1 PM!

Back to Singapore, again!

We spent another long weekend in Singapore. It's so close and we've learned the public transportation system pretty well so it's pretty easy to just take off and go. And there is "onboard" entertainment for B:

We went back to the Zoo (because we love it) but we also visited a new spot—Sentosa Island. This is a HUGE island resort just off the southern coast of Singapore. One tagline for the place is "Asia's Favorite Playground." Here are just a couple of items of interest at Sentosa: Universal Studios,  Maritime Experiential Museum (under renovation), S.E.A. Aquarium, Madame Tussaud's Singapore, Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom, tons of beaches.

We only had time for one of the many spots in Sentosa so we visited the S.E.A. Aquarium. Great place though the traffic flow through the place isn't very good. The website says they have over 100,000 marine animals and over 1,000 species in 50 different habitats.

But first things first. I always love a great undersea mural. I would love to someday paint something like this on a wall in my office!

We thoroughly enjoyed spending time watching this giant Pacific octopus. Fabulous! So often with octopus they are hiding.

There were lots of opportunities to take photos that might become screen savers for my computer. Here are two possibilities.

We saw lots of cool fish of course, most found in the Indo-Pacific: checked swallowtail (rare deep water anthias), whitetail bristletooth (a small tang), several new (for me) species of cardinalfish and so many more.

Loved the sea jellies! First we have the blue sea jelly or blue blubber jelly. Found in coastal waters of the Indo-Pacific they are pretty large at 14-18 inches in diameter. The different colors are due to the symbiotic algae that the jellies may host. Without algae, the color is cobalt blue. When algae are present, the color can be white, yellow, brown or even purplish. These are harvested commercially. Despite being venomous, if properly prepared, they are an Asian delicacy. Ah... too pretty to eat! And then there is the venomous factor...

White spotted sea jelly. Smaller, on average only about 4 inches in diameter but can grow to 12 inches. They are found in the waters of the South Pacific, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Another common name is the lagoon jelly.

And here's another potential screen saver shot:

Quite a few venues in Sentosa shoot off from a main center hub. That's where we found a Hershey store. B didn't want to be in the photo but I got him in it anyway. That's his hand touching the Reese's characters glove! We loved looking and the place smelled great!

This fountain with a spinning central sculpture was also located in the central hub.

As I said, we also went back to the Singapore Zoo. The skies looked OK as we headed out but we soon realized the weather was not going to cooperate on this day and we had not taken rain gear. The skies opened up! It was raining hard enough that as we purchased tickets they pointed out that they had very few "indoor" areas. We knew places like this always seem to have cartons of rain slickers to sell when it is raining, so we tried a nearby gift shop and voila! They had several cartons of clear, toss-away rain slickers.  Instant rain gear! The slicker protected the backpack as well. B models his lovely slicker near the polar bear exhibit.

There were not very many indoor spots on the grounds but we managed. After we had been there a while we took a break and got a drink and a bite to eat as it continued to rain. The place was jammed with others doing the same thing trying to wait out the rain. Eventually the heavy rain ended.

The orangutans were having a fun time.

 Looks like an Aldabra tortoise race.

We also stopped at one of our favorite spots: The Fragile Forest, a mixed species exhibit. On this day, we arrived as the staff was bringing out lunch!  On this visit, no visitors were touching the animals due to staff presence.

Construction update

It seems like ages since I last published a posting for the blog. We have been busy. Several trips plus daily life forced writing to take a backseat.

Here is an update on the progress at the construction site across the street from our bedroom:
I've posted photos occasionally since May when this project was just cleared land.
From August 29:

From October 5:

From November 9: They've poured most of the concrete by this point. And they pour it only at night for some reason. Note: New construction has begun to the right of the large building, behind what was a tennis court/club. We still have no idea what this will become. It has a very curvy look to it. Since I took this photo they have added an elevated, sloped concrete covered platform in the brown area at the left. Our guess is that they will be driving cars up the hill to drop people off or to park on the lowest level? But that doesn't really make sense either. We await further developments.

Update on the renovation of an apartment 3 floors above us: The renovation was begun in April and was supposed to conclude in August. Hmmmm. Still working on it and we are in November now.  We endure the daily pounding, drilling and our apartment filled with what I think is adhesive odors. B thinks it's paint odors. Sometimes it sounds like they are working right above us. We think the construction upstairs has caused trouble with the internet cables in the building leading to reception issues.  

Food and more Food!

There is a Dutch restaurant nearby. It's name says it all- The Dutch. It's sort of a Dutch pubfood type of place so they serve bitterballen. We had bitterballen on our first trip to Amsterdam and really liked it. The snack sized bitterballen are served with mustard for dipping. These are very hard to explain but yummy.

We had homemade sloppy joes! Mom sent a copy of her recipe and we could get the ingredients except for horseradish. I have since learned that we can get fresh horseradish here and grate it up ourselves but Mom's solution was quite a bit easier. Wasabi is everywhere here and it was easy to swap out the prepared horseradish for wasabi.  Really yummy! We had not had sloppy joes in years. We purchased some coleslaw to go on top and even found some nice seeded buns.

A while ago the American Women's Association held a cupcake competition of sorts in conjunction with a general membership meeting. They were not getting very many entrants so I decided to bring some cupcakes to add to the mix. There were 6 or 7 different entries including a birthday cake cupcake and a "healthy" muffin. My mango curd filled cupcake with a lemon swiss meringue took the prize. On top was some homemade yellow-colored sugar sprinkles.

I had trouble with the meringue in this heat but finally it came together. This is a really delicious "frosting".  My prize was a voucher for about $15 US and a free cooking class at Pantry Magic. Pantry Magic is a kitchen store located not too far from here. They have lots of things to drool over- it's sort of a mini Williams Sonoma store. Much more limited in terms of items they sell, but the quality is top of the line. With my voucher I bought some 100% cotton kitchen dish cloths. Yeah, really exciting. It's a set of 3 but they are nice.

Oh, by the way, why mango curd? I had made another batch of mango curd recently due to the gift we received of 24 mangoes at the start of the big mango season. These were top of the line mangoes. They make a really delicious curd.  My sewing friends always get excited when I bring a bag or 2 of mangoes to give away. Ibu Tin and Pak Oky each got some mangoes but I was still left with too many to eat quickly. What to do? Mango curd plus some were cut up and went into the freezer, some were eaten fresh. It really is a lot of mango to deal with at one time.

One of the times I hosted the sewing group I made some peach pie cookies. Very pretty.

Many of you know I do not care for mushrooms. However, there are so many kinds of mushrooms available here I just had to share a photo of the mushroom section at the grocery where I do most of my shopping. So many choices for mushroom lovers.

One day B wasn't feeling well and he really wanted hot and sour soup from our favorite Sunday lunch restaurant so I stopped on my way home to get him some. I walked into the restaurant and ordered some hot and sour soup to go ("takeaway" as it's called here). The very nice hostess had me take a seat at a table and while I waited she brought me some Chinese hot tea. This is a Chinese restaurant, yes, but everyone here loves heat in the food. Notice the size of the hot oil packet in relation to the size of the bowl of soup.

Along with 2 friends, I took an Indonesian cooking class. This class showed us how to make dry and wet traditional Javanese noodles. The wet noodles have a broth and are more like a soup. The dry noodles have little liquid. We also made a sauteed veggie dish and tamarind pan-grilled chicken. The basis of all of these dishes is a paste created using a mortar and pestle. Ingredients include candlenuts, shallots, garlic and a whole lot more. The tamarind chicken is marinated before cooking in a liquid made of tamarind and dates pulverized together with water. The lady teaching the class does not use very much oil at all, in contrast with a lot of traditional cooking here, but she really uses a lot of salt. Way too much as far as I'm concerned. We were given a little bundle of the basic ingredients she used so we could make the recipes at home. I have made the dry noodles at home and greatly reduced the amount of salt.  The next question is, can I buy candlenuts in the US? I don't know. The substitute would be pine nuts because you want a nut that has little flavor of its own. After the class we got to eat everything we watched being prepared.

Lastly, another batch of "green" drinks. Here we have on the left a lemon minty and on the right an apple spritzer.

 This is a margarita mocktail.

 No clue what this was but it's green!

Crafty Things

It was pointed out to me that while discussing having a tailor make 2 shirts for B in a previous post, I neglected to include photos of the shirts. So here you go. B was in Cilegon so he couldn't model them. Both Batik, the front one is a traditional Javan Batik, the back one a fairly muted Bali Batik. We bought this Batik in Bali on our last trip.

Get ready to laugh! I was working on my garden quilt (with the quilt on my lap and legs) and as I went to cut a thread, I accidentally snipped my pajamas. What to do? Apply an applique to cover my mistake! Cute little sea turtle.

If you are wondering when the garden quilt will finally be finished, I should have all of my stitching and applique done soon and the quilt finished by early next year. I'm nearly done with all of the applique: 28 flowers and 50 leaves along an undulating vine in the border. I still haven't decided whether I will quilt this myself.  I've been slowed down on the garden quilt due to other projects getting in the way. I've actually started a new quilt (yes, before the other one is completed), and I've put together fabric for a 3rd quilt that will be next in the queue and and am still working on knitting a shawl and a pair of socks. 

I recently hosted and helped teach a paper piecing class to our Needle Nomads group. We have many new ladies and we need help creating those memento mini quilts we give to departing members. It's nice to have the class at our apartment because we have so much space in the living room/dining room area. The second class was held at a friend's house. Several members bring their sewing machines and we all share the machines and tools. I've shown photos of this set up in previous posts.

I am so hooked on resizing paper pieced patterns down to 2 inch blocks. They are so cute! Some pieces get so small with the 2 inch finished size they become impossible to work but here is a photo of the results of the 2 classes. We now have a small stockpile of blocks but need more. This is good because it looks like we have 4 members leaving by early in 2018. In general, each one requires at least 12 blocks. One lady is great at crochet. She did the blocks with crochet designs on them. Unfortunately, she will be leaving in January and returning to Wellington, NZ.