Archive for November, 2009
It’s a long weekend here in Indonesia due to Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha yesterday or some people will refer it as Lebaran Haji (Hajj Celebration Day). We have several Muslim relatives in our extended family, so we took time to visit and greet them yesterday. The first stop was to my SIL house, they are hajjes, so the day was even more special for them. She cooked plenty of special “mouth watering, spicy and filled with coconut milk” Lebaran food, such as ketupat, rendang, opor, sambal, etc. They looked delicious and very tempting! I said “tempting” because I could only see. I’m avoiding such food because I’m still nursing my baby, so ended up just having some fruits 
. Lucky husband and son, they really had a great time eating.
We made another two stops after my SIL before we headed to the nearest mall to do our first Christmas shopping for this year. My husband was not really sure with the idea, he said it was still November so too early for Christmas shops. But I insisted to give it a try. It only less than a month before Christmas, I argued. Besides, I was hungry after seeing those delicious food earlier, so I wanted to eat something at the mall.
It turned out my husband was right, there were only few Christmas items displayed at the mall yesterday. In fact the mall itself haven’t decorated for Christmas. I saw some stores began to unpack their Christmas stock but they were not ready for sale, others were still plain. I guess, like my husband said, it was still November, so too early for Christmas shopping! Or maybe we just went to the wrong mall. Anyway, I’m glad he didn’t say the words, “told ya!”
The only store that was ready for Christmas was… ACE-Hardware! which was definitely not on my list of stores I wanted to visit. However, we went in anyway and wasted some money bought not really necessary some Christmas decors and lights. I was actually looking for some new clothes for us to wear on Christmas and some baby items with Christmas theme on it.
Then we went to Pizza Hut for late lunch, but since the boys were still full from my SIL house, I just ordered take away bruschetta, pizza and milkshake for my late lunch. After that we went home. So much for my first Christmas shopping. I’ll try different mall tomorrow 
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To customize a WordPress theme I mean. At least I could do that yesterday without ruining the template . Yes it’s more complicated than Blogger template but the basics are, more or less, the same. I managed to move the navigation bar from the top of the page to under the blog title and add a little Christmas countdown widget under it. Oh, by the way I think the widget doesn’t work well, or at least it’s not using the same time zone as mine. I’ll check it later. I also added an Adsense banner on top of the blog body section, who knows maybe some of you find it interesting and want to check on it , by pasting the code at index.php and single.php files. As for managing Adsense inside post, I use AdSense Integrator plugin.
I haven’t finished yet, still want to find out how to add a wider dynamic sidebar under those two sidebars where now I put an Adgitize widget on it. I pasted the Adgitize code directly at sidebar.php file, it worked, but didn’t like the result. I wanted it to appear similar to other widgets above it. Well, I’ll continue working on it later…
Today I will try to tweak this template a little bit. Will add some page elements on it and try out some plugins. In general I’m quite happy with this theme for its simple design and fast loading time. The color combination and header image are also nice. However, it looks so plain compare to the previous one, so I will try to add some bling-bling on it, like some adsense or banner on the sidebar for example.
I’m not yet familiar with WordPress theme so will need some time to do it. Let’s see if I can do that without ruining the whole template
Source: Wikipedia
At first I wasn’t really impressed with this car because it looked so small. I came from a minibus oriented family, my parents, brother, even husband and myself always had minibus or sedan, so I had doubted if I would feel comfortable inside a small car like that. However once I tried it, I instantly fell in love with it.
I found its slim body became a plus point as it helped me to maneuver easily around the crazy traffic of Jakarta. Not only that, my pink Honda Jazz was automatic so it was easier and less tiring to drive. It was the first and (so far) the only automatic car I have ever had. When buying a car I always thought why pay extra if I can drive a manual, so I passed the automatic offer.
The best part of that car is I got it for Free! Yes, it’s FREE! Because my pink car is not my own car, it’s my company’s car that I have used for almost five years now. The company paid for everything including the gas, maintenance and insurance
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Mitsubishi Kuda
, so when I drove my mom to the hospital under a heavy rain last Monday I had to use my own car, a Mitsubishi Kuda. I don’t know what it’s called in other country but here in Indonesia we call it Mitsubishi Kuda. Kuda means horse in Indonesian language. My Mitsubishi Kuda is kinda old now. My husband keeps reminding me that it’s time to change that car with a new one but I ignore him. That old Kuda has a sentimental value to me as it is the first brand new car I have ever bought with my own money, before that I usually bought used cars. I bought that over nine years ago. Long before marriage!I have to admit that I love driving my pinky Jazz more than my own Kuda. Good thing my boss said I can use it again when I’m coming back to work on January. I really hope so!
We went to the hospital yesterday to meet my mom’s ophthalmologist. That was part of her monthly routine check-up after having Lucentis injection for her AMD treatment on August. The initial schedule was supposed to be on the 10th of November, but since it had been raining hard lately we had to reschedule the appointment until yesterday.
The hospital, Jakarta Eye Center, is about 30 km away from our house and easy to be reached by train since both our house and the hospital are located near the train station. However, during bad weather like this, traveling by train is not a good option. There will be many delays or even cancellations. We tried to wait until the weather was good, but it never happened, it got worse instead.
So yesterday I forced myself to drive her to the hospital under heavy rain. My mom actually didn’t like the idea of me driving in rain, and to tell you the truth I didn’t like it either, but we couldn’t delay it any longer since she ran out of her artificial tear (Hialid 0.1) and started to feel burning sensation in her eye so she needed to get a new prescription.
Anyway, despite all the troubles we went through during our drive to the hospital, we heard good news from her ophthalmologist yesterday. He said my mom’s AMD treatment was showing a great result and her eye was already back and stable to its initial condition (which was after the glaucoma and cataract surgery), praise God. So the doctor changed her monthly check-up into every three month. Her next appointment was set on the first week of February next year, unless she felt something uncommon in her vision or her eye then she needed to see him immediately.
She also got a new prescription for her artificial tear and it’s copy until the next three months. Her ophthalmologist advised her to slowly reduce her Hialid 0.1 dosage from 6 times a day (current dosage) to whatever level she feels comfortable. His recommendation was to reduce it gradually until only three times a day but it depends on my mom’s eye reaction. That’s a really good news for us and we’re so happy to hear them!
