5 Things To Do For The Long Weekend

5 Things To Do For The Long Weekend

Ghazi Mokoginta

Hi! How have you guys been?

We, Jakartans, are the best long weekend spenders, aren’t we? Well, some people think that their long weekend sucked. Yea they do. But mine definitely awesome. Speaking about long weekends make me feel like writing about what things that we can do to spend them. Here are my top 5 list of what to do for your long weekends:

1.     Call your close friends and plan a sleepover a friend’s place

This was exactly what I did on my last long weekend. I called my close friends and arranged a sleepover at a friend’s. It happened. What we did there were cooking our own meals together, eating them together, and keeping up with each other, and spending some money on some booze at night. Having a good time is the main thing. Do anything you consider as fun together with your friends will make its fun level doubled, or maybe even tripled!

2.     Work on your postponed works

So actually this is such an important thing to do if you have some. If you keep procrastinating, you will find them all beating the hell out of you at the end of the deadline. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen. Just brace yourself and start typing!

3.     Get out of the ugly duckling image: A weekend makeover

You might wanna surprise your colleagues or campus friends of whom you meet everyday at work or at school with a killer new look. Go to a massage parlor today and get your entire body scrubbed. Spend some time to find the best salon in town and get a new haircut. Be extreme with the haircut, a totally new haircut and be confident with it. Get your face taken care of. Make sure you don’t choose a treatment that takes a long time to cure such as peeling, it will only make you look silly with all those lingering dead skins on the next Monday. Get a new affordable daily use perfume, and finally, spend a bit more cash on new clothes. A weekend make over.

4.     Reconnect with a long disconnected relatives

I know that you have been very busy at work or at school and that you got no time to connect with your relatives. Here in Indonesia, relatives are somehow important. You might don’t get it why they are even important for you, but trust me, they are. Let’s put it this way, they are your second family. Our ancestors have made a system for us to be somehow related to the people that we usually call relatives. The long weekend is the perfect time to get reconnected to them. You don’t even need to visit their place, just greet them on Facebook or twitter or maybe dial their phone number and talk to them just to keep up or …. Re-introduce yourself.

5.     Make a personal budget planning

This is not a bad idea. How are you gonna survive the rest of the month with a given budget at hand? Yeah, be your own financial planner. Make a budget for the rest of the month. It’s very doable. You have all the information you needed based on your experience such as how much a single meal will cost, how much a bus ride will cost, etc. Well, the most important thing of it is still, the implementation.

Ha! Finally. So these are what I think might be useful for us to spend our long weekend. Spending long weekends with boring and non value-adding activities is a waste of our precious time. Hope you like ‘em! Ciao! 

For The Love of Food.

I had a very good dinner at Otel Lobby. A very, very good dinner, indeed.

Otel Lobby was this new hit in the city. Before going there, I checked out the restaurant’s web page and was immediately convinced.

As I walked into the restaurant with my boyfriend, I understood the reason behind their name right-away; the interior was designed as if we’re in a hotel setting. Booths seating mixed with dining tables, very chic. The lights were dimmed creating a low key mood to the place.

Opening the menu I realized that the restaurant offers fined-cooked dishes. I ordered their Duck with Mashed Potato on the side.

(source; what I ate at Otel Lobby Roasted Duck & Chocolate Souffle)

The plating of the dish was really beautiful, really thoughtful, and similar to what I’ve been seeing in cooking TV shows. I was really in awe, ready for my very own fine dining experience.

I dug in, and wow, the food was really delicious. The duck was tender and juicy with crispy skin on the outside. The mashed potato was scrumptious, soft, with the perfect combination of bland and sweet.

How good is good food? I personally think food contributes a good 40% of pleasures in live. Well, it’s not a carefully calculated figure, but it’s a good representation of how good good food is.

Being the person that likes to observe new restaurants, new foods, I have witnessed food cooked really differently yet all together very flattering for my taste buds. Food, expensive or cheap, tasting really great. In a fancy restaurant or by the street in a food tent, still, great foods were offered.

The joy of munching something with that perfect texture, adventurous layers of taste, leaving different after-taste in your mouth is priceless. It is truly one of the most honest joy in life. One of the most immediate joy in life. No fuss, just really really great tasting food leaving all kind of joy in you.

For the love of food. For the love of the simplest joy in life.

Breaking the Myths: Stay Healthy While Getting Oily

When I was a child, I never really thought about my weight, skin or what so ever. I eat anything I want; junk food and snack at night. Until couple years ago, I realized that I already overweight when I saw my friend’s scale. She wasn’t too skinny, I thought maybe our scale only a few pounds in difference (I think it was my hallucinations), but the reality, I was 20 pounds….heavier!  I was shock, like really, really shock. My friends told me some foods that will make me fat because they’re all oily, some was (are actually) my favorite foods. But not all of them are that bad, I mean, some of them are oily in a good way.

I know you must be confuse and thinking “what the hell on earth is that?? Oily but healthy?? Does that thing ever exist?”  I proudly say, YES!!! They are oily, but yummy, moreover, HEALTHY! Penasaran? Here’s some my favorite oily, delicious, & healthy food (and ingredients):

1.     Avocado

Yes, this green fruit is indeed HIGH in fat, but the GOOD fat which actually helps you at heart-healthy diet! What makes you fat is when you drink avocado juice with milk & sugar. Milk (fat) + sugar (glucose) = FAT. Sometimes my dad use fat free milk instead of ordinary milk for avocado juice and dark chocolate syrups for me. It taste good, do you know that dark chocolate is also good for your heart, brain, and control blood sugar? Yap, avocado + dark chocolate = HEALTHY & TASTY.

2.     Fatty Fish

My mom always tells me to eat fish’s oil when she cooks milkfish. I know it’s tasty and soft (some people don’t like it very much, but I do) but why? Its fat, isn’t it? If it’s a fish fat, then if I eat that, it will be my fat, right? At least that what little me thought. Then my mom said, fatty, oily fish are rich in omega -3 fatty acids, so it’s good to prevents me from heart disease or cholesterol. You can find this benefit in salmon and also tuna. That’s why now I’m falling in love with salmon sashimi, yummm..

3.     Olive Oil

Have you ever eaten salad at the restaurant? Long time ago, I ordered salad at a restaurant claims that they serve healthy food. I realized that they added oil into it, but it was different with oil that I used at home, its more light. That’s the first time I tried olive oil. Yes, people use olive oil for their salad, because olive oil can helps you to lower your cholesterol! Isn’t that awesome??? Recently, my grandma (not my mom, she doesn’t believe about the benefit, so she still use ordinary oil) dumped her ordinary oil and start using olive oil. Yeay! Hallelujah!

Believe it or not, not all fats are bad.

TOP 5 THINGS TO DO ON VALENTINES’S DAY FOR … SINGLES!!

TOP 5 THINGS TO DO ON VALENTINES’S DAY FOR … SINGLES!!

Ghazi Mokoginta

Valentine’s day is coming! Got a date on Valentine’s day or what? Planning to have a romantic dinner with your special one? Uh-huh, or maybe … just maybe … you are SINGLE! Don’t worry if you are because there are so many things you can do to celebrate the day of love!

1.     Celebrate V-Day with your lovely family

Sometimes, growing up means tearing us apart from our family for a while. You might think that you see and talk to them everyday, but our hectic lives get in the way of things. But who knows what you missed during your busy days or the nights? This is a great time to get back to them and to show them that you care and love them.

2.     Love yourself with an All Day Pampering

C’mon! It’s Valentine’s Day and you are single. It’s not like you are going to spend your money on a fancy dinner or a big bouquet of flower. Look, being single doesn’t always suck – it gives you plenty of time to devote to pampering and getting your body taken care of. Maybe with waxing, scrubbing, and beautifying will tackle the reason why you are single in the first place. True story ;)

3.     Friendly Valentines

It doesn’t sound amusing, but it actually is not pathetic. There will be some of your friends that will also be single and you can enjoy this day together. You know, single persons gathering together with some other single persons, you might even find an attractive single man or woman who is a friend of a friend whom you talked about with a friend several weeks ago. Whaddup!?

4.     Setup a date with your parents

In rights and wrongs, tears and laughter, and sweet and bitter, your parents will always be there for you. The older we get, the bigger the possibility we get unattached with our parents and the less time we spent thinking about how they are both doing. THANK GOD you are single! Go book a decent restaurant, get your Mom a new dress, suit your dad up, and go have dinner with them. You don’t want to turn to your parents only when you have problems. They want to hear your stories ~ they want to spend time with you! No one deserves to spend this special day with you more than your lovely parents!

5.     Valentine’s Day Cookout

Do you have or a friend has a nice pad for a party? . Go get him/her on the phone and arrange a cookout! Now check out some other friends who can join the two of you in the cookout! Several close friends cooking meals in the open, keeping up with each other, sharing each other’s future plans, and just bringing the whole thing to the next level. How better can any other day get?