Category Archives: Adventures

These are travels, tours, events, and activities outside the house that I feel that are worth sharing.

Do You Smell What I’m Cooking?

Adventures, ,

hotdogI hate cooking. I don’t have any interest in food. I’m not a food adventurer. I eat what’s on my plate. And since I hate cooking and doesn’t have interest in food, I also don’t like food business even if I’m aware that food business is very profitable. But life has a good sense of humor.

My wife is pregnant right now. This is her second. She experienced miscarriage on our first baby so we are doing our best this time. She is having a very delicate pregnancy so we doing a lot of precautions. This means that I’m the one who’s doing everything in the house, including the cooking.

I don’t know how to cook. The reason is clear on the first paragraph. I only know how to cook hotdogs, fried eggs, spam, and any related ‘dishes’. Whenever I cook my specialties and recipes, I kiddingly call myself a ‘bull chef’. But at this time, because of the situation, I need to step up. I need to learn how to cook. Besides, I don’t want to feed her and our baby with instants and fast-food so I really have to take sacrifices.

My first problem is shopping on the market. Since I don’t cook, I don’t know how to shop for ingredients such as meats and vegetables. I don’t recognize or know the names of all the vegetables and I don’t know what part of meats and slices do I supposed to buy for a certain dish.

But because I’m excited with our first child, I learned what I supposed to learn. And I’m learning fast and I’m learning well. Most of my cooking came out successful. I never realized that I would learn to cook. The joy and the passion of cooking may not be already there but the feeling of joy when you see someone is enjoying your cooking is priceless. It is like an art that you created or song that you wrote and someone liked it. A single soul liked your creation is satisfying enough.

And if this life’s humor is not enough (‘cuz life is really funny), I’m going to enter into food business next year. I’m going to open at the first quarter of the year. My former client is selling his equipment and I was searching for business ideas. I really don’t like food business but for my baby, I will do anything to give her a bright future (I’m just assuming our baby is a girl because we are hoping for it.)

Now, I’m not only learning how to cook. I also enrolling on classes and seriously researching on the internet.

I’m not still confident with my cooking skills and this makes me nervous about opening my business. But every time I think about my wife enjoying my cooking, it gives me confidence and I know that my cooking is not going to be a bull.

My Worst Injury

Adventures

Harley-Davidson

I experienced a lot of bike accidents. I like riding bikes. There’s are times that I slid on a slippery road, and there are crashes with another vehicles too. I’m really blessed to still walk and move normally.

However, there is this two accidents that I consider as as worst and it given me an almost fatal injury. The first was I was driving on a left-turning road. This turning road is a bit narrow and the coming vehicles are not visible because of the building on the corner. So if the two vehicles of the opposite lanes approaching the corner don’t take extra care, they’ll absolutely crash with each other, or somewhere else if one of them will turn to avoid the other vehicle. And that’s what happened to me. I collided with this vehicle, a police mobile. When I saw the vehicle, I still attempt to avoid it by turning right but it’s too late. The bumper hit my left leg. It hurts so much that I sit and hold my leg on the road and stayed there for minutes. My bike is a bit crashed but still manageable. Just minutes after that, my leg swelled. I got an internal bleeding and it felt like my leg was filled up with water and it’s really painful. This ordeal took one month.

The other accident happened a year ago, still from the bike. I was driving my bike on a subdivision in an early morning. I was trailing behind this vehicle (an L300 Toyota). I swear I was not that close to it. But when we reached this turning road (again), the driver stopped and it reversed, without looking on his rear view and side mirrors. I also attempted to avoid being hit by turning my bike left, but it was too late (again), and I was hit. Although it was not fast and a hard hit, because it was on a reverse, but my ankle was squeezed between the vehicle’s bumper and my bike. And realizing that he hit something behind him, he stopped, with my ankle stacked. I thought it was just a bruise but when we reached the hospital, the doctor did an eleven stitches on my ankle.

And by the way, it was four days before my wedding. But I still managed to walk on the aisle.

Powered by Plinky

Home Make-Over: How to Turn Mistakes Into Success

Adventures, , , , ,

These past weeks, I had done a lot of makeover in our bedroom. It was a long time plan and it just recently materialized, through some changes in circumstances… and a little bit of pressure from my wife.

For a long time, I had agreed with my wife that our room needs a paint job. But with our plan to build a new home, I convince her not to push the makeover. We like nice home designs and decors and we would like it to apply our ideas in our home. Until recently, some changes had happened and we also have to change plans.

Last week, I started the room makeover with the painting. We search for nice possible colors for our bedroom through the internet and we picked dark yellow green. From the start I know it’s going to be hard because we have a lot of things in our bedroom and if we’re going to do some painting, we have to arrange things in order not to stain it with paint. By the way, we agreed that I’ll do the paint job my own for cost cutting.

I started the day with arranging our things, putting old newspapers on tv and other important appliances. I cleaned the wall with wet clothe to eliminate dust. And with the use of a chair, I started to paint the ceiling with a white paint. I chose the chair instead of a stair for its easy to use.

I know that I’m not going to accomplish the painting like a pro. There will be a lot of imperfections. But knowing that I accomplish something like this and did the room improvement myself, it is a great achievement for me. That’s enough reason to ease the tiring feeling.

The room painting took me a whole day. The reason? Ignorance. Not being knowledgeable. I feel stupid for not putting a rod on my paint roller. Not only it saves time, it also saves energy. I realized that if you’re painting a wall or a large canvass, you have to put a rod at the handle of the paint roller to serve as its handle extension. And I’m not going to be able to realize that if not because of my wife. Although the feeling of stupidity lingers for quite some time, I know I have to forgive myself for it, for the reason that I’m not a pro and it’s just my first time to paint with the use of a roller.

Another thing that I did for the room makeover is installing the window blinds. I also thought that things would be easy. But my drill made it double hard for me. I tried to drill a hole in my wall, and, guess what; I finished one hole in half a day. I thought that the wall was just tough. I called my wife to her office and informed her that I’m not going to be able to install the blinds before she come home. She suggested to do the installation with someone who “really know” how. Then they came to the house (I was outside doing my business) and the guy reached for the drill and saw the drill bit and asked Che if we have a bit for concrete. The bit that I’m using earlier that day was for wood. After he bought a bit for concrete, he finished the installation for less than two hours.

Thinking back with those mistakes that I made, I haven’t felt any regrets. Because I know, every mistakes have lessons to learn.

Recently, while I was searching for a news article to write for my news site, I came across with this news article about this site, www.DIYorNot.com . After re-writing the article and posted on the news site, I tried to visit the DIYorNot.com. I was surprised with what I discovered. The site is very useful for Do-It-Yourself house makeovers. The site also has calculator and provides cost information whether or not DIY is worth it or should you pay for pros.

There’s only one thing that I wish that I had made before doing my room project. I just wish that I researched the internet first before starting the project. Not only will it save time and energy. It will also save my face. 🙂