1. Spanish is slipping into my English

I rarely speak in English when I live in Jaén. Sometimes I speak with my friends from Colombia and Kazakhstan, or anyone who only speaks English. Meanwhile in Mallorca, I speak in English more because I teach English to a kid. Therefore, since I speak in Spanish more often here, I notice something interesting... I often slip Spanish words into my speech when I speak in English! Also, I have lost count of times when I accidentally respond something in Spanish when I am in situation that I should have spoken in English or even in Bahasa Indonesia.

When I realized that I started to mix them more than once, at first I thought my head was screwed up, hahaha. Well, there were a bunch of funny moments when I did that. As a starter, there were moments where my mind thought in one of the language, but when I spoke, I said it in other language!

• When my friend asked me what to do when we were cooking Indonesian foods, I told her, "Only mezcla!" (mezclar means to mix, so I tried to say "Only mix it!")
• When I told my age to a family, "Este año, tengo veinti six años!"
• When I spoke in English with a friend from Brazil, I accidentally said, "this night" instead of "tonight", because in Spanish I'd have said "esta noche".
• When I was in an ice cream shop in Regensburg (Germany) with my friends, the shopkeeper asked me in English if I wanted a cone or not, I answered, "Sí! Eh, I mean, yes!" We immediately laughed, and surprisingly the shopkeeper was an Italian!

• Whenever I respond someone in English, I ALWAYS begin it with, "Bueno, ..." (In English, it is equivalent to "Well, ...")
• Whenever I respond someone in English as an affirmative, I ALWAYS say, "Vale, ..." (In English, it is equivalent to "Okay, ...")
• Whenever I ask to make sure about something, I end the sentence by saying, "..., no?" (In Spanish, sometimes the interrogative sentence ends with "no?" or "verdad?", which is equivalent to "..., right?", "..., isn't it?", "aren't you/they?". When you end the interrogative sentence in English by saying, "no?", it doesn't make any sense, right?)

Not only that, this learning process also makes me adapting some manners of speaking that I have learnt from the environment where I live and people I interact with. What does it mean? Well, based on my observation and daily interaction with people here, Spaniards often do these things when they respond to something that are confusing or difficult, and unwittingly, I also do them on a daily basis!

• Saying "Uff..."
• Saying "Buah!"

Nowadays, when I am surprised or responding to a complex question, I say those words more often. As much as I can remember my whole life, I could say that I start saying those words only when I am in Spain. Of course, in Bahasa Indonesia, usually I would respond with, "Wah!" or "Waduh!" and it's very common to say there.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of electronic dance music. I prefer musics like funk, jazz, rock, or disco from the 70s and 80s. Nowadays I only like few of the electronic groups, such as Clean Bandit (they combine the dance music with classic instrument like violin & cello!), LION BABE, and this one, Disclosure!

I was disappointed when I couldn't watch Clean Bandit live in Jakarta. They came to Jakarta last December 2015. Too bad at that time I couldn't afford the ticket (geez, the ticket for concert nowadays is getting more expensive!), but when I heard Disclosure would come to Jakarta for the second time, I had no doubt about it!

After working on some projects, finally I could buy myself a ticket to watch Disclosure. It also became a refreshment for me in the middle of working on my thesis. Well I heard about the announcement since last April. I thought it was the part of April Fool's joke since I knew it on April 1st. Even people on the internet also didn't believe it. I checked on Disclosure's official website, there's no schedule in Jakarta; mostly in US and other cities on May. Anyway, I saw there's pretty big gap between their gigs on last April to middle May. Hmm, I guessed they could be playing in my city among the dates.

Not so long after that, I read a comment on Disclosure's Instagram telling fans to check out their blog post. There it was, the official announcement of them coming to Jakarta! I was so excited. I wouldn't miss any chance to watch my favorite musicians.

They only played on DJ set, they didn't do the exact full performance. At first I was like, "Huh? Okay..." but I didn't mind! It's a rare occasion that they can play in Jakarta. I also know they'll play in Bali next August, but Jakarta is much closer. Of course I really want to see their real live performance like what I see on Youtube. Seeing Howard & Guy Lawrence playing on full set is amazing! It would be much greater if Sam Smith, Lorde, Gregory Porter, LION BABE, and Brendan Reilly perform with them, LOL.

The day was coming!

I watched Disclosure with my friend Petek, since she also liked them. We went from Bandung to Jakarta on May 4th, which was the date of the event. I thought it was okay if we went at 3 pm to Jakarta with estimated arrival time at 6 pm. Guess what? I was totally wrong. On 5 and 6 May there were two public holidays, which provided us 2 extra days for weekend; our weekend started from Wednesday night! Since we went to Jakarta after work hours, the traffic jam was insane! We arrived at 8 pm on Tanjung Priok Bus Station as the result. Then we took Gojek to go to Ecovention at Ancol, North Jakarta.

This event was held by DGTL_LVE. Besides Disclosure as the main guest star, there were also other famous DJs like Tchami from France, Dipha Barus and Bima G from Indonesia. Too bad I haven't heard their songs, except Tchami. I only listened to one of his song, so I couldn't review their performance since I didn't know much about them. Sorry!

The first performance was Bima G, followed by Dipha Barus then Tchami. I could say Tchami was awesome, even though I didn't really know his music. Many people cheered when he came and played for the next 1,5 hours.


HERE THEY ARE!

I was soooo excited seeing them in real life. I was lucky enough to stand really close to the DJ booth because I could see the performers better or at least I could breath properly here. When I saw what was going on behind me, wow it was so freaking crowded! All the audiences tried to be closer to the stage, and of course we only had small space to move there. They began their performance with their famous "When A Fire Starts to Burn", and the crowd instantly danced!

They played some songs that possibly not included in their albums but I recognized one, it was "Jump Hi" by LION BABE. I was so happy since LION BABE also a great electronic music group. After that, they played "Voices" and "F For You"! Yeah!! They remixed both of songs and they were so goooood.

After few songs, I noticed the very specific voice of Gregory Porter... They were starting to play "Holding On"!! It was SO GREAT! They played the original song, which was all I hoped that night because I could sing along! "Holding On" is one of my favorite songs in their latest album, Caracal.


Other songs were coming, they kept making the crowd dancing through the night. I remembered that Disclosure started to play at 1.30 am. It was so late but it didn't matter, though. Then they played more songs like "White Noise" and "Magnets". For the last song, the played "Latch"!!


Did they just end the night? Nope! After people chanted "We want more!", they didn't hesitate to play one more song. As the encore, "You & Me" was played by the Lawrence brothers. The special thing was, they played the remix version of You & Me by Flume. That version was totally dope. You can listen to the song here.

Overall I was so happy to watch Disclosure even though they only played on DJ set. The sound was amazing, the visualizations on every songs they played were super cool, and of course their performance were totally incredible. I hoped they could play Omen and January that night, but well they didn't. Maybe next time? I really wish I can watch them one more time, especially when they do live performance.

By the way, thank you to DGTL_LVE for bringing Disclosure to Jakarta!

One thing you should do during your vacation: If you have chance to sleep, just go to sleep. Don't stay up late especially if you have long plan ahead. No matter how exciting your trip is, you always need time to rest so you can be ready for another trip on the next day. Don't do something ridiculous like me.

Since the previous day we woke up late, I was afraid that the next plan wouldn't go well as we hoped. So instead of sleeping, I decided to stay up late. I was tired, but I couldn't sleep. Maybe I was haunted by feeling that we could fail our plan again. I didn't swallow any energy booster like coffee (I don't drink coffee) or energy drink; I relied on myself that I could stay awake during the day.

The worse part for me, today was the day we visited some beaches in South Kuta and Uluwatu. Then, I was the only one who could ride motorcycle.

Here we go, the second day we stayed in Bali. Day 2 was started with.... nothing. We woke up late so we had to cancel our plan to go to Sanur Beach that morning. Sanur is well-known for sunrise spot, so it must be very amusing if we can see the sun rises there. Well we just moved on and did other plan that we've made. First we had lunch at "Nasi Pedas Bu Andika". This place is pretty popular among tourists. On my previous trip to Bali I have never heard it before, so this was our first visit to that food tenant.

Done with lunch, we went to Motel Mexicola. I browsed about this place on internet and I think this cafe has unique theme. When I heard it for the first time I thought it was a motel, but apparently I was wrong. I wasn't familiar with Mexican food but this first try should be interesting.

The cafe is located at Seminyak. From Kuta to Seminyak actually it wasn't too close, also wasn't too far. I just felt that riding motorcycle in Bali wasn't too tiring like when I was in Bandung or Jakarta. We spent about 15 minutes ride to reach Seminyak, and thankfully it hadn't been too crowded since we arrived still in the afternoon. At first I was confused to find where Motel Mexicola was. I had to find small alley, then finally we made it.

When we were going to enter Motel Mexicola, a waitress welcomed us. She also informed that the minimum order for each person was IDR 100K. Well I didn't know about this when I searched any reviews about this place, but it didn't matter. So both of us chose the bar stalls area to sit. The sofa spots weren't in use because they're available in evening.





After spending 2 to 3 hours at Motel Mexicola, we decided to visit the closest beach from there. The security officer kindly told us there's Petitenget Beach, only 5 minutes by walking. Thanks to him, we could leave our motorcycle for a while to take a look to that beach. When we arrived, it was so crowded. Finally we went back to Motel Mexicola to take our rented motorcycle, then we tried to visit other beach.

Well, we were totally relying on Google. We searched the nearest beach in Seminyak, then we saw Berawa Beach. It wasn't too far from where we were. This beach was not too crowded and of course, we were spending time watching sun set there. Some were strolling around with their pets, some were surfing at the beach.


We stayed at Berawa Beach until the sky was dark enough. The location was easy to reach, FYI. After that, we tried to go to Sindhu Market at Sanur to have dinner. You know, Seminyak to Sanur was far. It was like you rode from west to east; from edge to another edge. It took 45 minutes, but thankfully we didn't meet any traffic jam here.

After the long ride to Sanur and having dinner there, we wanted to go back to hotel. I didn't realize that we were going to run out of gasoline. I forgot to buy it. So, in the middle of Ngurah Rai Bypass (it was pretty close from our hotel!), the motorcycle was suddenly stopped working! Of course we were panic. There's irony here; across the road, there was a gas station!

We were confused at first, how to push our motorcycle to the gas station since the middle road was blocked. We thought we just emptied our mineral water bottle then walked across the road to buy gasoline, but we're too afraid to cross the road because a lot of vehicles passed in a hurry. The road was also quite dark.

Maybe I could say this was a miracle. There was a man with his motorcycle who also ran out of gasoline. That man talked to us, then Petek replied him. They talked in Javanese (too bad I didn't understand), saying that his friends were on the gas stasion to buy him gasoline. Then he kindly called his friend to buy additional gasoline. Too bad, when his friends came, they just bought around 1,5 Liter of gasoline; which meant only for 1 motorcycle.

You know what? He offered his gasoline to us, he said his friend could go back to gas station once more. We were so thrilled, he was very kind to us. Then we paid to that man for the gasoline & added extra money, but he refused it at first! Wow. We forced him since we had to pay it, and finally he accepted it.

We went back to hotel with full of joy, even though we just had an incident. We couldn't imagine if we hadn't met him on our way back to hotel. His kindness really helped us through our difficult situation. For whoever you are sir, respect!

Our trip in Bali was getting more exciting. Tomorrow would be a very very long trip. Where were we going?
Check out the next part of my post!

Pastinya di depan rumah-rumah itu cocok banget buat berfoto. Sepengamatan saya, di sana rumah-rumahnya berisi restoran dan cafe. Ada juga rumah yang jadi tempat sewa baju ala Eropa, lebih tepatnya di lantai 2. Jadi bagi yang mau sewa baju, coba naik ke lantai atas cafe yang tembok bangunannya dari bebatuan.


Setelah itu, di area belakang saya menjumpai sebuah lapangan hijau yang cukup besar. Di sana dipajang beberapa sepeda sebagai properti yang bisa dipakai kalau mau berfoto ria. Nah di spot ini juga oke untuk foto, khususnya dengan latar rumah Eropa dari kejauhan. Asli, kesannya memang nggak seperti di Bandung lho. Nuansa Eropanya juga terasa banget di sini. Selain lapangan, kalau mau duduk-duduk lucu bisa juga menempati bangku taman yang tersedia di sekeliling lapangan.



Lalu yang jadi spot favorit para pengunjung adalah miniatur rumah Hobbit. Kelihatannya memang mirip kok, apalagi pintu bulat khasnya. Untuk foto di depan rumah ini, orang-orang sampe ngantri lho.




Setelah puas keliling, saya dan Petek berjalan keluar melewati rumah yang pertama dilewati. Kami baru sadar kalau sebelum rumah itu, ada rumah kecil di sisi kiri yang ternyata jadi jalur menuju taman lainnya. Rumah kecil itu menjual aneka pernak-pernik, khususnya gembok kecil. Nah gembok ini kebanyakan dibeli untuk dipasang di sebuah jembatan nggak jauh dari tempat itu. Bagi para pasangan pastinya gatel pengen beli dan pasang gembok yang sudah diberi nama masing-masing.

Di sana juga cocok untuk foto-foto, namun areanya lebih kecil dan jalannya lebih sempit. Untuk bisa foto-foto di atas jembatan, seenggaknya 2 sampai 3 pengunjung bisa berdiri di sana dan harus bergantian.



So far jalan-jalan di Farmhouse cukup menyenangkan. Berhubung padat dan kecil tempatnya, jadi memang ruang gerak sedikit terbatas kalau lagi ramai. Tapi untuk konsep bisa dibilang oke, karena suasana Eropanya berasa banget. Kalau mau main ke sini, pastinya akan lebih santai kalau datang saat weekday. Farmhouse juga lumayan dekat dari Setiabudi jadi kalau ingin tempat wisata yang nggak begitu jauh, ini bisa jadi solusinya.

So, selamat liburan dan selamat jalan-jalan!

Di post sebelumnya, saya sudah menulis tentang cara-cara yang biasa saya lakukan untuk merawat rambut saya. Nah kali ini saya mau membagi apa saja produk yang dipakai, khususnya untuk rambut keriting yang sangat kering dan sudah diwarnai berkali-kali.

Rambut yang diwarnai otomatis jadi lebih rapuh, kering, dan mudah bercabang. Untuk mengurangi rambut bercabang, setiap habis mewarnai rambut atau tiga bulan sekali saya pergi ke salon untuk potong rambut. Alhamdulillah sampai saat ini saya sudah terhindar dari masalah rambut bercabang dan rapuh. Permasalahan utama saya saat ini adalah rambut kering, megar, dan kusut.


Berdasarkan pengalaman pribadi, ini dia produk-produk yang saya gunakan untuk merawat rambut keriting yang sudah diwarnai. Produk yang ditulis benar-benar sudah saya pakai dalam jangka waktu lebih dari 3 bulan sehingga efeknya sudah saya bisa rasakan secara langsung.

Shampoo and Conditioner
Mane 'n Tail Herbal Gro Shampoo
[Alternative: Herbal Essence Hello Hydration (Moisture and Shine)]
Nggak gampang untuk mencari shampoo dan conditioner yang pas buat rambut saya. Kebanyakan bikin ketombean dan makin parah keringnya. Tahun lalu saya sempet potong rambut kependekan dan denger-denger kalau Mane 'n Tail itu bisa membantu mempercepat pertumbuhan rambut. Jadinya saya pakai deh, sekalian nyoba. Harganya memang menguras dompet, tapi menurut saya worth it banget. Lumayan membantu pertumbuhan rambut, lalu kondisi rambut saya lebih baik dan nggak sekering biasanya. Untuk conditioner, saya pakai conditioner-nya Herbal Essence. Barulah saat shampoo Mane 'n Tail habis, saya pakai shampoo-nya Herbal Essence. Efeknya? Saya merasa rambut lebih lembab, nggak begitu kering, dan lebih mudah diatur.

Hair Vitamin
Lucido-L for Damaged Hair (Spray and Oil)
Saya pakai kedua versinya, yaitu spray dan oil. Versi oil saya pakai setiap habis keramas dan rambut dalam kondisi setengah basah. Lalu versi spray saya pakai setiap hari, baik saat mau pergi atau pun stay di kostan. Ini sangat membantu merawat rambut saya yang diwarnai supaya nggak bercabang, kusam, dan kering parah. Makanya saya berani bleach rambut karena sudah memproteksinya dengan hair vitamin sejak lama, jadi efek bleach-nya nggak begitu parah.

Other Hair Spray
Makarizo Hair Energy SCENTSATIONS
Yang namanya bau nggak bisa dihindari ya, apalagi kalau sering berpergian. Bau segala macem kayak asap knalpot, asap tukang sate, dan kerabatnya bisa terperangkap di rambut. Apalagi kalau rambut keriting, aduh bener deh segala macam bau langsung diserap dan hilangnya pun cukup lama. Makanya saya butuh hair spray yang bisa menghilangkan bau seketika. Kalau lupa keramas juga bisa diakalin pakai ini kok (yikes!), hahaha.

Hair Cream or Mousse
SYOSS Airy Curl Cream (Curl Control)
Produk ini penting untuk menjaga bentuk keriting dan mencegah rambut jadi megar. Saya pakai ini karena dari beberapa produk lainnya, ini yang nggak begitu lengket dan nggak berasa berat di rambut. Jadi setelah pakai vitamin oil, saya pakai cream ini biar bentuk keriting bisa terjaga seharian. Tapi saya punya cara sendiri untuk menggunakan cream ini agar nggak terlalu kaku dan bisa lebih hemat.
Aslinya cream ini cukup kental dan lumayan lengket di tangan. Untuk mengakalinya, saya masukkan cream ini ke dalam botol spray lalu ditambahkan air, dan kocok sampai rata. Hasilnya, cream ini nggak akan lengket di tangan, rambut bisa mirip-mirip  wet look dan nggak kaku kayak pakai hair spray, serta menghemat jumlah pemakaian. Saya udah pakai selama 6 bulan dan belum habis-habis lho, mengingat harga satu jar-nya nggak begitu murah (maklum anak kostan, hahaha).

Kira-kira itu yang bisa saya share terkait perawatan untuk rambut keriting yang sudah diwarnai. Harap diperhatikan bahwa cara merawat rambut bisa beragam bagi setiap orang. Produk digunakan juga sangat bergantung pada si pemakai alias cocok-cocokan. Intinya sih jangan nyerah dulu sebelum menemukan treatment dan produk yang pas.

Even though maintaining curly hair is so challenging, remember, you have something that others don't. So take care of it and you'll thank yourself! Adios muchacha!