If one Monday should fall
Today is what some (or most, or whatever nominals you’d prefer) Indonesians call “Harpitnas” (short form for Hari Kejepit Nasional, or the National ‘In-the-Middle’ Day): A workday squashed in between two holidays (Sunday and Eid’l Adha). It isn’t exactly Bank Holiday Monday, but it can almost be like it if work gives you a day off. But they don’t. January is often the months of many holidays, and companies are loathe to give more reasons for employees to be happy.
But, sometimes there’s just nothing to do between mid-morning every-ordinary-Monday hecticness, filing (double ugh!), and…. playing Halma with fellow colleagues. So, we crossed the road and got ourselves some DIY magic kit. Pay ten-thousand rupiahs (roughly a dollar) and get two tricks: the pencil-through-paper trick, and the ring-through-chain trick. Now, the trick is to find a sufficient window of office time to practice our magic trick.
On another bend, yesterday wasn’t as lazy as I thought it would be. There were weddings to attend and people’s hands to shake. Obviously occasions such as those were excuses to dress up, play nice, and zero in on food not normally consumed outside festivities.
Sometimes, though, I wonder why I should bother dressing up nicely (or too nicely) at all. Unlike all day receptions in most western countries, most wedding receptions ever held in this city last no more than three hours, and guests spend no more than an hour in most. There are still places where they held receptions for days, obviously, but not in a big, sprawling metropolitan cities where monies for building hire can easily support a small country or two.
If one Monday should fall…. it should fall with good food and good company
Had dinner at Yuraku, a Japanese-style buffet restaurant. It served good food, with a decent selection of dishes (from dimsum and sushi, to teppanyaki, to the porridge, to all those boiled stuff and… stuff). Some of the drinks came with free refills, too. Unfortunately the restaurant wasn’t for the visually-challenged, with its dim lighting and cramped space. Mum complained about there being not enough staff to cater for the sell-out crowd, but any more staff (or customers) and nobody’d be able to move anywhere. A golden rule would need to be put into order: “Don’t wait up for them to serve you. Serve yourself. Failing that, approach a member of staff with your plate, bowl, and/or glass, then state your purpose clearly.”
They had cute, aww-factored eating utensils, and small parrafin-powered burners that could lick eyebrows off everybody who came too close to the fire. They were aiming at minimalist chic, I guess, but I wouldn’t know anyway, what with the lighting and the crowd (can’t say much about the crowd, because… hey! Good for business, right?).
MSG though… a different story. The two boil-pots (what on earth do you call them anyway? Shabu-shabu? What?) provided diners with two choices of flavours: stock (most probably beef, or chicken, or both. But most probably beef broth) and Tom Yam . They both taste slightly similar, the Tom Yam being the slightly more tangy of the two, obviously. You’d notice the MSG, not immediately, but you’d notice it for sure. Right now, I’m ditching my mug and is opting for a more straightforward bottle version of water. “Dry as the Kalahari” comes to mind. I’m drinking water by the gallon, and drinking water is definitely on the healthy scale of the market. Not so sure about the MSG though. But as far as I know, the other non-boiled food are quite okay. It’s unclear whether they contain MSG at all, but they may do, in smaller doses. Or it could be just me and my slightly screwy radar.
The dessert entered the realm of the could-be-wonderful, but obviously (dot dot dot). It’s dessert: fruits, cakes, and jelly. Can’t go wrong with jelly, I suppose.
Yuraku: West Boulevard, Kelapa Gading. From Kelapa Gading Mall Roundabout, towards By Pass. Opposite Makro (or Angke restaurant), Inkopal Gading complex.
Price: around 60,000 rupiahs. That’s… 3 quids and some change (!). Or 6 dollars and a few loose change.
Obviously, I could start ranting about exchange rates, but I shan’t. It’s not good for the appetite.