Eats: Finally! Decent curry meehoon @ Tabona

Being in Jakarta certainly brings back memories of student days in Glasgow - absolute delight when we find food that's similar in taste to KL, can't complain when we have nothing to compare against and it's the next best thing. LOL!

And so Hubs delightfully texted me when he and my friend's husband (then fiance) went to somewhere in Pluit to try this curry meehoon that's pretty similar to what we have in KL. I managed to try this couple of weeks ago.

I've since found out that this particular street i.e. Jl Pluit Sakti Raya is one of the places to go to for Medanese Chinese food. According to friend's husband, the original outlet is in Medan and this is the Jakarta branch that is managed by the brother. You can choose to have your curry with either meehoon or rice, and we chose meehoon.

The curry was slightly runny but flavourful. Each bowl is served up with a chicken drumstick, few pieces of gizzard and a potato. And of course, being away from home, this is really the next best thing. I was almost disappointed when I finished slurping up the curry. If it had just been me and Hubs, my powers of persuasion would have convinced him to order another bowl to share! :)

Trying out Blue Bird Group Apps

I finally tried out the Blue Bird apps today, to order a taxi for a friend and myself for our little excursion to Plaza Grand Indonesia, with a little bit of hints from Hubs. Hubs had to take a taxi to work this morning and decided to order a Blue Bird last night. When he got into the taxi this morning, he messaged me that the apps worked fine and told me to try it out.

The apps only work if you have a local Indonesian number and they inform you as well, once you have downloaded the apps. There were a few preliminary steps that I had to go through, which involves setting up my account with them, key in my mobile number to which they sent a verification code to and I'm ready to go.

As you can see at the bottom left hand corner, there's an "Order" icon to order my taxi. Once I keyed in the necessary address, date and time of pick-up, a confirmation notice was sent instantaneously to my phone.  When I pressed the "Tracking" icon, I saw my order status as "In The Queue"

Just about half an hour before pick-up time, another notification (below) was sent to my phone, informing that the taxi and its ID has been dispatched.

As you can see below, the status has changed to "On The Way" and a little car icon has appeared next to the designated pick-up location. 

At about 15 minutes to 11am, I went down to the lobby but didn't see my taxi. I called Hubs to cross-check what he did this morning, and he told me to ask the lobby receptionist if my taxi has arrived. A phone call to the security post revealed that my taxi has arrived and was waiting outside. Finally, taxi came into the compound and we got into the taxi alright! And oh yeah, I also saw that the ID of the taxi was also visibly pasted on the dashboard above the glove compartment so that passengers can cross-check that they got into the correct taxi. Awesome!

Eats: Say that again? Fook Yew?!

I gotta acknowledge this. The Ismaya group really have some pretty interesting ideas for concept-based F&B outlets. And Fook Yew is one of them. Vocally, Fook Yew sounds quite offending, especially if one were to say it with a British accent, but heck! it sure does make you do a double take and look at this restaurant with curiosity. Well this cat got slain and went to check it out.

Menu-wise, it's a bit of a mix and match. I can't really make out what is it. There's no theme here - some Cantonese, some Shanghainese and with a little bit of bubble tea thrown into the mix to throw one off the tracks. I ordered the stir-fry hor fun with beef in XO sauce, as well as Shanghainese "Sheng Jian Man Tou".

The stir-fry hor fun is surprisingly good. Got "wok hei" which literally means "spirit of the wok" which is the essence of Chinese stir-fry. And on the theme of throwing one of the tracks, it came served up in American Chinese take-out box. LOL!

I didn't care much for this i.e. the Shanghainese "Sheng Jian Man Tou." To start off with, I've stop eating wheat-based food due to my allergy, but I ordered this anyway to find out what is this about. I only ate the fillings without the wheaty bun bits. So can't really comment if the texture of the buns were up to mark. But so far my experience of Chinese food in Jakarta tells me that they still cannot grasp texture really nice bun pastries like the ones you can get in KL, Singapore or Hong Kong. Perhaps it was my choice of fillings as well, which was crab meat and some tomato-based sauce. Maybe it would have been better if it was a meat-based fillings.

Decor-wise, Fook Yew is a very visually attractive restaurant. A mix of modern and old, very well played out by the colours and the many decorative pieces found in the restaurant. Maybe that's the idea behind Fook Yew, IMHO. Just an eclectic mix that doesn't make sense.

A pair of his and hers cheong-sam salt and pepper shaker, set on a table top made of tiles.

Surely this reminds you of "Raise The Red Lattern" that made Gong Li an international fame. 

With visual statement like this on its feature wall, one can't help but to really look at Fook Yew which means "Luck" and "Friendship"

Chinese cooking philosophies?! Your guess is as good as mine... LOL!

And perhaps the most interesting of all...

Buying live prawns in Jakarta (Warning ahead: TMI)

Whenever I go to the wet market in Mayestik, I'm always fascinated by the fishmongers who have live prawns for sale. Of course these are pretty small prawns. We are talking about a cooked size of between 2 - 2.5 cm in diameter, but I love to have them in stir-fry dishes with vegetables for instance. So last week when I was there, I decided to buy 1kg which cost me IDR 60k.

When I got home, I gave them a rinse (and they are still alive!) and begin to peel off their heads. Took awhile to get over my own initial awkwardness of "beheading" them (and thinking that they must be saying "Don't peel my head off"), but kinda got used to it. One thing I noticed that with live prawns, their heads is surprisingly very strongly attached to their bodies. A very different tension compared to "beheading" dead prawns. And of course, there were a couple of them walking and swimming legs that were still twitching out of involuntary reflexes after they have been beheaded!

Well you can't get any fresher than these...

Before:

The aftermath: 

The Birds of Jakarta

A very reliable way to get around Jakarta is via the Blue Bird Taxi Group. With Blue Bird, one hardly goes wrong. Drivers are courteous, they apologize if they accidentally took a wrong turn and had to make a longer route (happened to me!) and all major shopping malls in Jakarta usually have a dedicated queue for Blue Bird taxis.

For economy prices, go for the blue color taxis. I remembered once I decided to fly into Jakarta quietly without telling Hubs, with the intention to surprise him. That was really my first time of taking a public transport over here. As soon as I exited the airport, I feverishly searched for the turquoise blue bird logo. At the airport, hailing a taxi can be chaotic. And if you don't keep your wits around you, you may end up with a less reliable taxi service. I nearly got touted but stood my ground and insisted my blue bird. Phew! Close call...

If you have a bit more cash to spare, there's the executive class called Silver Bird. These taxis are almost exclusively Mercedes Benz. And they go back black colour with white "Silver Bird" wording. Pretty executive I would say. Price-wise, slightly more premium, but I don't think it's a lot. Maybe after USD, it's probably few bucks more premium that the blue ones. Personally, I have not sit in any of these, but I heard some of the drivers can speak some English. So not too bad a way to travel, if you need some local commentary. 

I have also found out pretty recently that Blue Bird group have apps supported by iPhone and Android for you to order your taxi. I have since downloaded it for just-in-case, but have not personally experience its reliability. But from what I heard, it was quite ok.

And this is one sure way to travel.  What happens when you need a big people carrier? Well fret not, coz Blue Bird has just the solution. Say Hello to Big Bird! :))

Kopi Luwak Reeducated

Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to tag along Hubs to meet up with his friend to understand more about kopi luwak supply here in Indonesia. This friend i.e. Pak B. was the same person whom we bought our first packet of kopi luwak from.

After braving the usual traffic congestion (what else?!) we finally made it to the meeting point, which was Pak's office-cum-cafe for potential business contacts to taste coffee samples. After the usual pleasantries, we finally got down to some kopi luwak tasting session. Me likey! :)

And so here they are. First up is kopi luwak robusta beans. I didn't realise that they classify them to this extent. My previous understanding of kopi luwak was just well.. kopi luwak - where coffee beans are just fed to the civet for them to be "processed" by the digestive juices of the civet to get that special taste that is kopi luwak. Personally I didn't quite like this. It had a kinda flat/neutral with a slight burnt taste to it. In fact, it reminded me of the Vietnamese weasel coffee that Hubs bought previously, which unfortunately we still have 4 packets sitting in the kitchen and nobody knows what to do with it. So probably the Vietnamese ones were produced using robusta beans.

And since we have kopi luwak robusta, we definitely must have kopi luwak arabica right? So here it is, and it had a very contrasting difference in taste compared to the robusta brew. It's difficult to describe exactly how it taste like but the arabica brew had a rounded taste that's both rich and delicate and definitely smooth and mellow. I took out my camera to snap both cups of coffee with flash just for fun and noted a difference in the colour of the brew. With the arabica - it was a clear brown liquid while with the robusta i was almost black. You can see it at the edge of the coffee cup, indicated by the yellow arrows.

Pak B also showed a few samples of the dried up kopi luwak beans. Ta-da...

It definitely looked a lot more processed compared to the ones I've seen in the farm in Bali. According to Pak, the civets are very picky eaters. Of course, these days we are talking about farmed kopi luwak for hygienic processing purposes. Once the berries are picked, they have to be served up fresh to the civets. And these peculiar animals will only eat the freshest (maybe in their taste buds, the highest quality) berries. If the berries are set aside overnight or even a couple of hours - sorry, it's reject goods.

I reckon this is probably the novelty surrounding kopi luwak - that these cats"pick" out the freshest beans that produce what is probably known as the most expensive coffee in the world.

Our IVF journey - Results day...

"Have you ever loved somebody so much, It makes you cry"
"Have you ever needed something so bad, You can't sleep at night"

Well the last line of this song sang by Brandy described me exactly the night before we were due to go to the clinic for our beta hCG test. I couldn't sleep at all, and can't help but to think how the day would be. Hubs had arrived from Jakarta that night to be with me when we go to the clinic the next day. I had some mild spotting that night but didn't think much of it since we were going to the clinic already.

On the morning of results day, things didn't look good. The spotting has progressed to mild bleeding. I informed Hubs immediately and begin to cry. After calming myself down, we went to the clinic anyway for my test. A visit to the toilet after the test revealed more bleeding. We went back to the clinic and informed the nurses. They gave me another progesterone injection and we begin our 2 hours wait for the lab results. I didn't even dare to go to the toilet because it meant that I have to face up to what I feared most in my heart. But I had to go anyway, and it just didn't look good.

I told Hubs that the bleeding has progressed to what I usually experience on Day 1 of menstruation. We even joked that probably it's best to know our fate like this, rather than hear it from the doctor. I just can't help tearing again.

Finally we heard my name being called. And it's a confirmatory no when we finally saw Dr Wong. He explained that probably the genetic makeup of the embryos may have been defective. Unfortunately, we won't really know that because we did not have enough quality embryos to start with. If we had more, the clinic could wait two more days and perform Day-5 transfer where for almost certainty, these Day-5 embryos would have better chance of implantation. Since we only had two viable embryos, the clinic couldn't risk waiting another 2 more days.

I've always thought that gynaecology clinics are such happy and joyful places, filled with beaming proud parents who are eagerly looking forward to that first confirmation of pregnancy, the first glimpse of the tiny beating heart on the ultrasound, the first visual confirmation of a baby boy or a girl, and so forth... However, this joy is not ours to bask in. Not yet anyway.