X'mas Party, the Netherlands

On the 15th of December, we had a company Christmas party. Every year, I was alone at the party as I’ve had a long distance relationship. BUT this year, both Josh and I were invited to the party with a nice treat from my company so that Josh could travel without any cost on us. Besides, I was suggested to take a week off while Josh was in town. What a treat! I had the best Christmas gift even before the Christmas day! Plus, to avoid “drink and drive”, we all stayed at the hotel where we had the dinner; no worries about drinking a lot and partying hard! (Ok, some people had too much! It showed the next morning at the breakfast.) Anyways, this party was awesome, and I may stay in the Netherlands forever…!

By the way, about the dress code; we were supposed to dress up, but I did not expect the guys to wear tuxedos (of course, with a bow tie)! That is “dress up”! I’ve seen guys in tuxedos before, but it was at Casino Night or in movies. It seems when Dutch people have formal dinner party, they dress up REALLY well. I actually really liked it though. At the end of a year, having a nice meal in formal clothes is really nice. My British boss and Josh (American) were in regular suites. I suppose this is something very Dutch?

Paris, France

On the 5th and 6th of December, I went to Paris. On the way back, I stopped by this souvenir shop, and the first thing that caught my eyes was Foie Gras. (Ok, the first thing that caught my noise was cheese. (me no like cheese.) I’ve never bought this expensive canned food before.
I have eaten foie gras in a restaurant, but I’ve never bought one to cook. I was really hesitating if I should get it or not because I had no idea how foie gras was packed in the small can or how to cook it myself. But I told myself that if I didn’t get it now, I would have never bought it. Or I probably would spend as much time to determine whether to buy one or not. There is always a first time with everything, so there I go. I bought that one expensive canned food.
I actually got to taste one; raw foie gras (or just as is from a can) on a piece of bread. Ok. This is not my favorite way to eat this thingy. I can really imagine or feel the liver with my tongue.

When Josh came in town, we open the can. We both were very excited but at the same time very nervous. We didn’t know what to expect. When we opened the can, there is this yellow gelatin thing on top of the foie gras; not that beautiful thing to look at, especially on something we are about to eat.

Josh had a little piece as is from the can on bread, but no second bite. That tells you something. I sautéed 1cm-thick foie gras slices with salt and pepper. Ohhh…this was so good! After sautéing the second half, I added red wine into the pan to make sauce. It came out to be good as well! Overall, it was fantastic! I think I’ll get it again the next time!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Finally, I came home to Amsterdam. After I parked my car coming from the airport, it was about 8am, and here is the view of Amsterdam at 8am. I totally forgot about the mornings in Europe (Northern). It's dark!
Oh man, I miss Asia!

Manila, Philippine

I came to Manila, Philippines. It is a trip from November 27th rough December 1st.

After being occupied by Spain, Philippine was occupied by the United States, so their cultures are not like typical Asian. Their original religion was Islam but now most of the people are Catholic. According to my colleague, Philippines are pretty much religious. Also, Manila is an international city, so everybody can speak very good English. I don’t think it is limited to Manila, but the entire Philippines. Therefore, those jobs which were relocated to India are nowadays come into Philippines. Philippine’s English has American accent, so call centers prefer to employee Philippines than Indians because of the Indian accent. It seems Indians immigrate to Philippines nowadays. Depends on jobs, some of them are from Britten, so there are schools that teach British accent in Philippines. I respect their seriousness in their work.

On the way from the airport, Manila looked more like Jakarta. But the next morning, Manila was different in daylight. It is much more developed than Jakarta. I haven’t seen any other areas of Philippines, but I don’t think this country can qualify for the third world. Their shopping malls are as big or even bigger than Americans and very fancy. Their Christmas decorations are everywhere. I think it is as much as the ones in New York City.

However, I can see some of the Third World sides; for example, children staying outside until late, many skinny street dogs, terrible traffic jams and ignore traffic lines on the streets, the programming of traffic lights is not efficient enough, coffee at work is instant one, it is not allowed to flush toilet paper in the restrooms and so on.

Usually, the hotels in those cities are excellent compared to the price you pay, plus something like massages are relatively good price, too. That’s my best luxury.
I’m not sure about Filipino food. The first night, to celebrate that I was in Philippines, I ordered Filipino food. I had two bites, and I couldn’t eat the rest. The menu said it was rice noodles with seafood. I thought the rice noodles were like Vietnamese or Chinese, but Filipino ones were thicker and clear and rubbery. However, the Filipino restaurant that I was brought to the last night was very good. Maybe it is depending on the meals.

Speaking of hotels (or anywhere else), I realized that in Asia or at least in Philippines and Indonesia, people call your name with “Mr” or “Ms”. Also, when they say something, they attach “sir” or “ma’am” in every sentence. It is amazing. I can see that they are showing the respect, but I’m not better than them. I guess being customers is something to do with that…? In Japan, we say customers are God. They may have the same attitude, perhaps. But listen to this. The first morning, when I left my room, I saw a housekeeper in the hall way about 5 doors down. When I passed by him, he goes “Good Morning, Ms. Nakazawa.” I was very surprised the fact that he knew who I was. Remember, he could not see my room number from where he was! But I think he had a list of guests, so he could check it up before I passed him. Okay, understandable. The next morning, I saw him again and passed by each other. He again goes “Good morning, Ms. Nakazawa” with full smile on his face! Amazing! He didn’t even have anything in his hands. Services are excellent anywhere in Asia! Loving it!

The second night, I was brought to a crab restaurant. The food was fantastic, and this is one of the dishes. It is 1.5 kg crab! And that is the only crabs they had, so we had no choice but left with a good one! This was cooked in Szechuan style, so I guess it was not Filipino food.

The work I did in Manila was training. The company I worked with created this banner for the week. It is about 2m x 50cm standing on the floor in front of the building entrance and in the training room. Ok, my last name is misspelled (bottom), but I felt like I became a star! This was the first time to see my name on a banner, so it was pretty cool. They even gave it to me for souvenir, but not sure what to use it for or when. Usually, we accept only maybe up to eight attendees in training course, but this time there were max 35! That’s a lot of people. And we were in this amphitheater room, so I totally felt like a professor. Besides, I had to use a microphone; the heavy duty, real microphone, not a pin-microphone. I hadn’t held that kind of microphone for 15 years since Karaoke century in Japan. Actually, I sounded good, so I kept talking for the whole three days! I even did standup comedy for 30 minutes (seriously)!

I am not sure if there are Philippines traditional sightseeing places, but when I asked my coworkers, she told me about shopping malls. They are not sightseeing places to me! Anyways, I did not get to see any traditional Philippines this time. Manila started being developed about 10 years ago, but most buildings started creating the skyscraper for the past few years. It is amazing how big the city is and built in such a short period. And more and more new buildings are being built as of now. The next time, I would love to see country side of Philippines.

Bali, Indonesia III

Even though I like visiting sightseeing places, what I enjoy the most from any trips is to look out of window from a car. I can see the actual local life styles; no fancied up for tourists, but what's actually local people are facing every day. It sometimes could be the struggle to survive day by day depends on the country.

When I saw this scene above from the car, the picture was so cute; a little girl grabbing her father on the scooter enjoying the ride. When our car was passing them, I realized that there was another little boy in the front of the fater (left). Now, that’s not cute anymore. That’s a dangerous scene.

I also saw many kids riding scooters with their friends. They look like 10 years old. It is incredible. I asked the tour guide if kids were allowed to ride scooters. He says not when police is around. Amazing! They are not even teenagers!

In Bali, even though most of the businesses are related to tourists, there are others, too. Harvesting rice is a major one. Balinese harvest rice three times a year. It is incredible, but it makes sense because it is hot all the time. What I was curious to know was that in one field, the rice is ready to be cropped (already brown), but the other area has just planted rice (green).

In Japan, we always have a season to crop rice; that is fall. However, where it is hot all year long like Bali, then when is the season for anything? I understand that the temperature doesn’t change much in Bali, but there are two seasons; dry and rainy seasons. I wonder how this applies to the harvests. Do pineapples grow better in dry weather than rainy? I’m not sure. What I know is that their fruits are fantastic!

These are some areas that are famous for stone carvings. When we passed by, there are so many stones shaped like Buddha, elephants, naked ladies, monkeys, you name it. It seems like they are mostly religion related though. They are made out of different stones. Some of them look very old, but probably it’s something to do with the color of stones. Brown ones make them look very old.

Guess what these are. These are mangos. I’d never seen mango trees. It was cool. I didn’t even think about mangos being on the tree. When I think about it, it makes sense though. They are like apples. This is what happens when shopping fruits or vegetables from super markets all our lives. We forget the fundamentals or don't even think about it. (Is it only me?)

Cows in the back of a track. Cows are very expensive in Bali, (or maybe anywhere else) and they cost about 1,000 USD each. Now, that's expensive considering their standard living costs (average annual salary - 800USD). According to the guide, those cows are sold to become food or to grow bigger to be sold later on for a higher price.

The difference between Indian cows and Balinese is that Balinese ones are in good shape and mostly, they are tied to something like a tree where as Indian cows are walking everywhere like human being and very skinny like you can see the bones. Speaking of animals, I also so many bird cages on the streets or hanging out of roof. I thought these were for little pet birds, but actually they were for chicken! They could be roosters.

For upcoming festival, each house had some decoration in front of their gate. It is a long bamboo standing, and the top is bent. The top edge part of the bamboo is representing rich people. By having the bamboo bent, it symbolizes that rich people are looking after poors. Also, there is an umbrella opened and tied to the bamboo. It is a symbol of moon. There are two different colors of umbrella; yellow or white. They are symbolized for women and men. A few of the houses have both color umbrellas, but most of them have only one, yellow or white. When we were going through this town, I saw one side of the street having yellow umbrellas, and the other side with white. They were very beautiful together.

I enjoyed my one and a half days of Bali experience. I would love to come back again at least for a week. Next time, instead of having very busy schedules, I would stay in a hotel for a few days relaxing having no plans. I would go down to the beach any time I want, and take massage whenever I feel like. The rest of the time, I would go out to explore more Bali! It would be fantastic if I could bring my parents.

Bali, I will be back!

Bali, Indonesia II

I'm not sure where to start. There are so many things that I would like to write about. Okay, let me start from when I arrived at the airport in Bali.

When I arrived in Bali, I wanted to get some cash. There were no ATMs around, so I walked up to exchange service counter. There were about 5 of them lined up next to each other. As soon as clerks see me walking towards them everybody starts screaming “come here come here!!” what a competition. I thought exchange counters are more like banks. Yeah, they are competitive, but they don’t really show it. Besides, usually there is only one exchange service at one location or at least you don see them side by side. I picked the counter where the lady approached me first because I realized that they all have the same exchange rate. I felt guilty for the rest of them. What a competitive place.

The second day, I took a day tour. I was expecting a bunch of people waiting for the same tour guide at the hotel lobby. It turned out that I got a dedicated guide for myself, but not only that, I also got my own driver! When we, the guide, the driver and me, got in the car, I was a bit reluctant to be honest thinking “they could just drive off not bringing me back to the hotel.” As soon as I saw other tourists having their own guides at sightseeing locations, I felt relieved. It seems it is not so common to have a tour group with a bus, but rather having a private guide with a private driver with a regular car, in my case, Civic.

My first destination was the second biggest temple in Bali called Taman Ayun built in 17th century. The picture above is the gate of the temple, and the picture on the left is inside the palace. Those buildings are called Meru, shrines. They were so beautiful standing right up in the blue sky! According to the tour guide, mountains are admired as holly or God by Balinese, so Meru shrines have a shape of cones because they symbolize mountains.

Tourists cannot go inside the palace because it is holly, but there is a path going around the temple palace to see what’s inside.

	People were getting ready for a big celebration that happens once every fifty years. Lots of people, both women and men, were working together.
	Another group of women were preparing lunch for the workers. These are made out of rice. I would call them rice balls, but they are not balls. Remember, scones symbolize mountains, so rice balls for workers also shape like scones!

The second location was called Tanah Lot, a temple in the ocean. This was pretty cool. You can walk to the temple during the day (low tide) if you are ready to wet your butt (just kidding but close to that). This was pretty cool to see it right there, but also from the cliff where I took this picture from.

The opposite from where I was standing, there was more shrines. These shrines are even more beautiful during the sunset. Imagine their figures shaped clearly in black of the orange background!

The good thing about having your own tour guide and driver is that you get to decide what you want to see. Another location with the tour package was to go to something called “Monkey Forest.” Okay, I’ve seen lots of monkeys in Japan, and they even attack you if you have food. I’m not a big fan of that. I asked the tour guide if Balinese enjoy something like that. He said no, but tourists like it. So I asked him to take me to somewhere else. Then, he brought me to very tourist beach called Kuta. It was beautiful with lots of surfers both tourists and locals. They are really tanned to black almost. Amazing! This is the place the bombing happened in 2002 at a very popular night club. Kuta is really different from any other Bali areas I think. It’s like Miami; there are lots of shops and restaurants on a street. You can’t tell you are in third world country. That part of the island is something else. It was good to see the place, but I will stick with Nusa Dua where I stayed. (I think the tour guide said it means “two islands”)

Indonesian lunch at the end of the tour.

I was supposed to come back around 4pm, but somehow, I was back to the hotel at 2:30. So I got extra time to go down to the beach! After going into the water for a few minutes, I was laying down at the beach relaxing. It was very relaxing. I needed it!

By the way, about the tour guide, I think I kinda got ripped off. He was very nice and all that, but at each location, he tells me about the place in three sentences or so, and then says “take pictures”. After I take pictures, we walk to the next location where he again says “this is a great location to take pictures. Go ahead” and he waits. I wanted to know more history or culture about the place. I think 70$ was too much for that guide. Does this sound like I got ripped off?