Peanut Free Sweet Chicken Satay (Sate Ayam Manis)

Jajanan Solo (Solo 'snack' foods)

I blame my sweet tooth on the wonderful Solonese food that I grew up on. Solo is located in Central Java with a magnificent regal culture. It's so obsessed with royals that they decide to upkeep four kingdoms in the area the size of Adelaide, each with its own batik print and imperial outfits. (Kate Middleton eat your heart out). And of course, the amazing, sometimes verging on ridiculously unhealthy obsession with eating (sweets containing half a kilo of sugar AND condensed milk, tripe soup, fried intestine crackers, anyone?).

Sustainable Eating

Who knew that food has a pretty bad environmental impact! (From www.weact.ethz.ch)

Last week, with a group of friends I signed up to do this one month of living, eating, and travelling sustainably. Admittedly, it's pretty embarrassing that I've only started this now, considering now that every day I write, research and learn about the economics of renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions, and putting the brakes on excessive consumption. It's probably time to walk the talk a bit :) 


It's pretty common knowledge biggest energy-intensive/carbon-emitter culprits are the electricity generation and transport sectors. But since demand of products/services in these sectors is derived from the final output, it turns out that the food industry has been pretty naughty contributing to 31% of total anthropogenic (a fancy word for human-driven) emissions. If you think of how much energy is used to convert that happy little cow in the paddock to into the chunk of steak in your gob, it all adds up: the farming, land use, transporting, cooling, lots and lots of wrapping and packaging, more cooling at the supermarket, and finally cooking. 

Osso Bucco & Risotto alla Milanese : A mini weekend in Milan

Day time tourist
Italian police patrolling in possibly the cutest and most non-threatening uniform in the world (top-left);
the majestic Duomo di Milano (top-right); Galleria Vittoria Emmanuele arcade (bottom left); the iron-and-glass dome covering the shopping arcade (bottom right)

Milan. The capital of high fashion, birthplace of the biggest fashion houses (Prada, Gucci, D&G, Valentino, Versace, Missoni), where people are so immaculately dressed with not one hair out of place, and Ferraris/Lamborghinis/Masserattis roam the streets like there is no tomorrow. I've always wanted to go there but being on a student budget, I have always cast off Milan as one of those places I said I'll only visit when we are at least back on a payroll. But fortunately, last weekend, we had the opportunity to hang out in Milan with some family and definitely made the best out of it! 

Luxurious Quiche Lorraine: Champagne, France

Reims Cathedral, much prettier than the Notre Dame Paris :) 

Moving to Europe was definitely one of the best things I've ever done. We've been here for a year already but the novelty of traveling around Europe still hasn't worn off. When we first arrived we decided to buy a General Abonnement travel card, which allowed us unlimited travel around Switzerland for a whole year on any form of transport and discounts on trains in France, Germany, and Italy. It was definitely a good purchase! 

Mie Goreng: Makan-makan!

Food coma in Solo, Central Java (top left); just a regular Tuesday night dinner at my house (bottom left);
breakfast of champions (right)

There are two things about Indonesia that always fascinates my BFF (boyfriend forever i.e. husband), M. The first is obviously the surfing, which unfortunately he doesn't get to do much in the landlocked country of Switzerland... :( Anyway that's another story... The second is the simplicity of the language, at least compared to German which we have been struggling with for a year. No grammar, no tenses, no gender, no conjugation. But the best thing is that a plural noun is just the single noun repeated twice. Like 'anak' is a child, 'anak-anak' means children. His favourite words are those that are already repeated in a single form (spider = laba-laba, spiders = laba-laba-laba-laba...?).



The word to eat (=makan), when 'pluralised' into makan-makan means the favourite past time of Indonesians: feasting! Seriously Indonesians love eating!! But thanks to some good genes, they are always so skinny! I on the other hand, share the love of food that most Indos do as well... but after changing diets when moving to Australia (I blame Nutellas in boarding school), somewhere along the line I've lost my Asian skinny genes and adopted the fresher-ten genes which never really seemed to go away even after I finish my degree and got a job... (FYI: the fresher-ten is the 10 kilos you put on in your fresher year)

Goulash Paprikash: Guca Trumpet Festival, Serbia

"Beach" on Ada Ciganlija, a river island on Sava River complete with an artificial lake. 

Back in August, we found out one of our friends was doing an internship in Belgrade, and so we decided to go visit him since we haven't travelled eastwards ever since arriving in Europe.

Belgrade was definitely a nice break from Zurich. We could actually afford to eat... excessively... We had coffee about 3 times a day (cafe hopping along the pedestrian-only street of Knez Mihajlova), massive brunches for about 10CHF (at really nice restaurants!), dodgy-looking-but-super-delicious chicken burgers, and cheap beers were plentiful. The city is really urban, and the people are super relaxed and friendly. One thing I noticed (and obviously the guys I was traveling with..) were the girls, who well, made me feel really um... inadequate. Either Belgrade girls are very gifted or plastic surgeons get a lot of business here.. :)

Summer Spritz: Zurich, Switzerland

Chilling by the lake thinking "will own boat one day" (top-left); Zurich Street Parade (bottom-right);
Jumping off Quaibruecke (right)

Summer in Switzerland is pretty awesome... 


The Swiss clearly know how to pack as much fun as possible in that tiny window of 3 months where the mercury constantly nudges the mid 20's. In Zurich, it's all about spending every single afternoon possible by the lake (fighting the 'crowd' to get patches of grass to sit on, never mind it feels so weird that it's not a sandy beach!), outdoor bars and barbecues (grills), music festivals on weekends, people packing up their Winnebagos and going on leave for 2-3 months at a time. For some reason, the Swiss are also obsessed with throwing the biggest parties during summer... The Zurich Street Parade in mid August which is supposed to be the biggest in Europe, the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival, and the open air festivals across the country (Paleo, Frauenfeld, St Gallen, Locarno)...  I swear I almost went broke by the end of August...