My Four New Favorite Eating Places in Jakarta [FoodBlog]

Maybe not everyone knows that I have moved back to Indonesia since late November 2012 for good (I think), but I am just gonna update about my food-life for the past two months. Below are the list of food-chains or restaurants from the least expensive to the most expensive that I just tried once in my life, but I am gonna go back again anytime soon, because all of them were scored pretty good based on my taste bud.

1. D' Cost Quick

After they established a fairly good name in F&B industry in Indonesia past few years, D' Cost Group decided to open their new type of food-chain, namely D' Cost Quick. To be honest, I never tried D' Cost Seafood Restaurant before, but when I tried D' Cost Quick in Pasar Festival, Kuningan, I was surprised with the price that relatively less expensive, about 12-22k IDR (~1.4-2.4 USD) per portion even for neighborhood mall and nice taste. Like usual, I tried something with weird name: Mie Cumi Saos Bangbang. Another plus is that they provide dine-in customers with free-flow tea, so drink as much as you want, just be responsible.

2. Salero House
Trying to have "chick" decoration, this eating place caught my friend attention, because we seldom see any Padang Restaurant with this kind of interior design. Moreover, the menu list is all about Padang, even you could find pasta ala Padang style here. I was curious about how the taste of Martabak ala Salero and I was surprised how they changed the filling of it with beef rendang and for me it tastes great! In case you wanna give it a visit, it is in Kota Kasablanka.

3. Caprese Restaurant, Pizzeria & Bar

Also located in Kota Kasablanka, similar with Salero House, this place has a good food and nice staff with great ambiance (or maybe because me and my friends came after lunch hour passed). So far I have tried their pizza, lasagna, and pasta, which in my opinion those three are good.

4. Gyu-Kaku
For this, I should have said thank you to my friend, Dinda, who organized our new years eve gathering in this place, Gyu-Kaku (Pacific Place), otherwise I would not know how good this place is. Gyu-Kaku is Japanese BBQ Restaurant, but the one that I want to highlight is actually their desserts. I tried Coffee Pudding.

A (Night) Meetup Session with Nicko Widjaja and Rhein Mahatma of Systec Group

Next Tuesday, Nicko Widjaja and Rhein Mahatma of Systec Group will come to Singapore for few days. They would like to meet and have small discussions with students and professionals who have interest in entrepreneurship scenes in Indonesia. It is open to all nationalities.

Nicko Widjaja is currently CEO of Systec Group and Adjunct Professor in Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) - Business School. He has 11 years of experiences in marketing and entrepreneurship. His career includes founder of IncyteLab, an ethnographic and consumer insights firm that focuses in investigating the upcoming trends and consumer culture and also co-founder of Thinking*Room, a design agency.

Rhein Mahatma is currently Associate of Systec Group and co-founder of StartupBisnis. He has experiences in content and social media strategist.

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Event Details

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When: Tuesday, 23th October 2012
Time: 8pm 730pm
Venue: will be informed to those who RSVP!
Fee: Pay what you order!

There is limited space for this event, so if you are interested, please kindly drop an e-mail at egi.septiadi@gmail.com with e-mail subject "Systec Meetup" by Sunday, 21st October 2012. Please indicate your full name and contact number, because the confirmed venue will be informed to all attendees via SMS and/or e-mail.

Nuansa'12: Canting, Was Enjoyable But ...

I attended Nuansa'12: Canting with no expectation, due to their last year show. I have been watching Nuansa Musical Show Production since 2010 and this 2012 show satisfied my eyes and ears, although there are some scenes that required my minds to patch it all together, which makes me wonder whether there are synchronization for story flow between my two friends who wrote the script. For example, I was confused from scene when the lead actress pregnant and all of sudden at the next scene, she is no longer pregnant. They should have developed the story in between first in my opinion, or perhaps there is no need to show the "pregnant scene", instead just skipped it directly to the scene when the kid already grown up to avoid momentary confusion. That's just one out of few confusing moments in the point of audience's view.

Nuansa'12: Canting ticket and handbook

As I mentioned that my eyes and ears were satisfied with this production, and I can say satisfy is underrated word to describe how I feel towards this musical. Firstly, they really have great choreography, which I found it as really a splendid item and indeed it showed great talent of dancers and choreographers from Indonesians in NUS. But, great choreographers item in this production is also a weakness of this production. Believe it or not, dancers who are supposedly serve as supporting casts for some scenes become a center of stage, which I found it is not right at all. For example during the lead actress did monologue, meanwhile there is a couple dancers did their contemporary dance item at another side of stage. In my opinion, supposedly dance item serve as support item to represent the lead actress monologue. Instead of feeling that way, my brain told me to focus mainly on the dance item.

Beside the choreography, the light and stage manager did a splendid job when they played around with the light and other visual effects. There are only few concerns for room of improvements after I discussed it with few friends. Some people who I talked to, found the visual effects background during "Dukun" scene and "Flood" scene i.e. fire and thunder visual effects respectively were not necessary. Visually, it ruins the scene awesomeness.

Moving on to musicality aspect. I found music arrangements of this production were really great. When I read the description of their Music Director, the experiences, awards, and formal education in Music justified the quality of Nuansa'12: Canting music arrangements. But, the production team should really check all the equipment, because there was microphone faulty (I think) during the show for first few scenes and it happened again somewhere towards the end of the show.

Overall, Nuansa'12 team really did a great job, with a score 4 out of 5 in my opinion, although I still prefer their 2010 show. Their strength points are their dance items and music arrangements, but the story flow and actress/actors skills should not be forgotten as the main focus in any kind of musical drama shows, not the other way around.

After the show, took picture with one of producers and lead actress!

A Week to My Birthday, But A Company Ruined It [Author's Corner]

It was Friday 14th evening, after finished giving my tuition at CCK, I headed down to Tiong Bahru area. As the clock kept running, I realized that I have an hour to kill, so I decided to sit in Coffee Bean and ordered my favorite drink, Iced Caramel Macchiato.

As the time approached to my interview schedule, I prepared myself before walking to the interview place. When I walked toward the direction that I thought was correct direction, I realized that it was not the right road and I decided to check it in Google Map.

"Fuck My Life!" That's my first reaction when I realized that I was not supposed to go to Tiong Bahru MRT, but Redhill MRT instead. So I decided to take Bus 33 and alighted at Redhill then walked to the interview place. Lucky me that the person in charge who sent me the e-mail asked me to come 30 minutes earlier, so instead of came at 18:00, I reached the interview place at 18:15.

Some people asked me about what company that I attended for this job interview, but I will give a logo clue instead of giving their full name. :)

By the time I reached interview place, one of the staffs handed over me 4-pages form and 2-pages structure questions that I need to fill and answer accordingly. So I tried my best to finish it as soon as possible and I handed the filled form and answered structure question papers about 19:00.

After handed over all of those, I checked my phone and the yellow color on my battery sign alerted me to turn off my phone, because my evening still long since I will have meeting at 8pm in Clarke Quay and also because I could not find any available power sockets around. During waiting time I just realized that there were quite numbers of candidate that waited with me at the same time. It was 7-9 people in the room, excluding myself.

Waited, waited, and waited, until there were only 2 other candidates and me left in waiting room when the previous candidate just finished his interview, but it was already 19:50 (I was bored and I decided to turn on my phone to check any messages and time). But after this, the interviewer was on the phone and walked around when he answered the phone for about 15 minutes, then he called the next person without any "sorry for make you waiting" or so whatever line to the next candidate.

So it was about 20:05, when it was only me and another candidate, called him Mr X, in waiting room. This another candidate handed over his filled form and answered questions papers to the staff after me, so I thought it will be my turn to be called after this, but apparently when the clock showed 20:30 and the interviewer finished with the candidate, the interviewer called Mr X instead of me. My reaction after that was "WTF! Forget it, I have better things to do and I am already fucking late for my meeting". So, I decided to walk out from waiting room and headed down to my meeting in Central @ Clarke Quay. Along the way, I sent an email to person who contacted me to withdraw my job application, since I can't find any staffs around to tell it on their face.

It is not like my first time attended job interview. I could say that I have been through quite some, but from this one I learnt few things:
1. Respect other people time, everyone has their own limit for waiting.
2. "Sorry" is an important word that some people might forgotten sometimes, unnecessary showing that you are inferior from others.
3. Treat your guest(s) with great hospitality as possible as you can provide.
4. Employees attitudes are part of company's image, especially their working culture.