#TrySomethingNew: Coworking spaces are productive AF
Maybe it’s the surroundings or my productive mood, but I got a lot of shit done on my first time ever working from my rented table.
But honestly, I think it’s because I had a 6-hour time frame. I really made use of my 360 minutes.
Co & Co is the first (apparently) coworking space in Bandung. Lucky me, it was so close to my Grandma’s! They have a variety of packages of desk rentals, including daily passes – full day, 3 hours and 6 hours. The receptionist was such a sweetheart, and there was a decent level of noise.
It’s one of the most memorable workspaces I had because my 6-hour pass left me no choice but to be productive. It even made me forget to eat!
It was also super affordable that it made me think of moving to Bandung (again). But that’s no longer an option.
Regardless, I’m really glad I did this! It’s really funny how we’ve progressed from renting apartments to renting desks. When do we start renting water bottles?
So@andrianarinaldi and I have accidentally started a ritual of exploring new places every other weekend – and if we’re lucky, every weekend! – and this place was one of them.
Three Folks is tucked inside a charming guesthouse and it is the perfect place to exclude yourself from the chaos of South Jakarta. It has the right homey feel to it, so expect yourself to stay for a little longer than usual. They cook up some pretty decent (although usual cafe menu) heavy meals, but people usually stay for the ice cream. And you should.
We shared a bowl of black citrus (what) and lingonberry yogurt. The black citrus was hands down the most surprising of it all because it was so. good. Totally went over my expectations!
Well, not really 9 ideas, but September has been all things new for me. It really felt like the month is taking its sweet time to end so all these different things are popping in my head.
Or maybe there are nine things. Let me list it all down:
I work from home now
My parents and I finally went to Kalimantan together, and we all went to Banjarmasin (new place yay!)
I’m gonna add a new project that’s completely food-related and call it tummy tales
I visited two new cafes in a day (!!!) simply because there was no wifi (ugh the life of a 21st century working woman)
I’m currently researching about local textiles because that’s probably my next project - and I am honestly super excited but also scared which is also exciting!!
Probably going to take graphic/web design courses so that’s an upgrade
Ok let me just be honest: I didn’t really like Banjarmasin. There wasn’t anything in particular that caught my eye, except for a few that required you to drive out. And since my dad didn’t want to drive, that option was out.
I thought the food would change my mind, but it didn’t really help.
It’s a mix of rice cake, jackfruit curry and a protein choice between chicken or fish. I’m terribly against food that are sweet (unless they are desserts) and this one had manis all over.
Another thing I’m not a fan of in Banjarmasin is how large food portions are. I might have been in a little unenthusiastic mood, because I could barely finish most of my meals when I was there, and this was one of it.
So if you’re into large portions of sweet food, I highly recommend you to try it. I’m pretty sure if I had slapped 3 tablespoons of salt, I would have changed my mind.
The restaurant seems a little popular for reunions and came highly recommended for tourists who are looking for something local. Just to note, the restaurant has no seats, which means you have to sit on the floor.
Would I come back? Tbh, no. But it’s garnering a lot of local fame, so it must be doing something right!
#TrySomethingNew: Missing the floating market sunrise party
The tagline for South Kalimantan’s capital is “the city of a thousand rivers”, which is evident in Banjarmasin as the river is where some locals live, shop and even eat; it bridges small villages to another.
On our last day in Banjarmasin, I knew I wanted to check out at least one floating market. At 6AM, we left for a floating market at Lok Baintan with our Grab driver who shared the same lack of knowledge of this floating market’s whereabouts.
We followed the map’s directions, only to find out that the roads were waaay too crazy for a small car to go through, and at that moment I knew we were gonna miss it. Even though 6AM sounds early, it’s hella late in terms of floating market time.
We got into a small village which was right next to the river, but saw very little boats carrying things to sell. It wasn’t until we stopped near a mosque and walked out to a little pier, and saw a group of boats hanging around.
The locals say we were too late (it was only 6.50!!!) and a lot of them left. We saw many boats passing by, and people heading home with their purchases of the day. Lots of bananas, fish and even food. If we were there much earlier, we could have rented a boat and be a part of the hype.
Starting a new writing project regarding hellenism and my practice. once i get a decent way into it, im considering putting them out for people to see. got two options:
publish them on this blog just as a regularly scheduled post series
record them and post them on a hellenism YouTube channel (just in the vein of video essays or audio podcast stuff)
if you have an opinion on it, let me know. like, reblog, message, tag, whatever you want to let me know what you think i should do. or if you think i should keep it to myself, go ahead and say that
Sometimes you don’t even realize how much you are gravitating towards a color until you look up and are surrounded by it.
Apparently, purple is my new jam.
The yarn is my newest color “Crystal Ball,” the hexipuffs in the bottom corner are for my ongoing Beekeeper’s Quilt project, and the notebook features the work of @nikury who I absolutely adore.
Wow, I cant believe I’m finally finished! In April I decided I wasnt torturing myself enough and set the lofty goal of knitting 19 scarves and a blanket (roughly a double size bed) for the people at my place of work.
And today (November 30th, 2020) I finally finished that project!
It took a long time but each scarf is unique and designed for the individual. The blanket I finished many months ago and I didnt take a picture of it. Maybe I’ll do that before I give everyone their gift.
Dont be afraid to take on large or difficult projects. Just set yourself a realistic time period to complete it and plan accordingly.
Its almost christmas so here I am reposting this for those who might need it!
Wow, I cant believe I’m finally finished! In April I decided I wasnt torturing myself enough and set the lofty goal of knitting 19 scarves and a blanket (roughly a double size bed) for the people at my place of work.
And today (November 30th, 2020) I finally finished that project!
It took a long time but each scarf is unique and designed for the individual. The blanket I finished many months ago and I didnt take a picture of it. Maybe I’ll do that before I give everyone their gift.
Dont be afraid to take on large or difficult projects. Just set yourself a realistic time period to complete it and plan accordingly.
Inspired by the Kpop group BlackPink (mostly inspired by the album covers)
This scarf took FOREVER but only because I didn’t have much motivation to finish it (beyond not starting a new one until it was done). Even if you aren’t a fan of Kpop, I think the pattern for this one is amazing!
I’ve been living in South Korea for over 2 years and since I’ve arrived I’ve wanted to design something based on the traditional patterns I see while traveling. A month ago I finally made the time to sit down, research, and design a pattern for a scarf.
So recently on a trip I started thinking about how fun it would be to knit the Video Game “Doom”. There was a thread that mentioned that since Doom can be broken down to the most basic form of 1′s and 0′s, theoretically it could be knit.
There is actually already a blog that is working on knitting Doom using this exact method.
When I started thinking about it I came up against a few pretty big problems.
The first being, what style is the best way to visually represent it?
Doing it with knits and purls is the first obvious answer, but visually I don’t think it would look very good.
The way I would want to do it is with 2 colors, one for the 1′s and one for the 0′s. This way would make the front look good, but the back would look messy. Double knitting it would look the best, but the actual size of the project would be almost impossible to do.
The next question would be, what would be the best form that could handle the size?
Doom is not small. Individual groupings of 1′s and 0′s are in groups of 8, and the file has about 200,000 groups of 8. That would be at least a million stitches.
A scarf, even at the smallest possible thread and needle size, would be so long it would be useless beyond just having it. I want this project to be functional, not just to do it. The next idea would be to do a blanket. But with over a million stitches, it would have to be King sized at least. And that would be heavy, involve very long circular needles, and just be so massive that it would be very hard to finish it.
The final question is, what is the best way to follow the pattern?
The code would have to be followed forward perfectly. To knit normally, you would have to read the first row forward, then read the next row backwards since you’d be knitting from the opposite end. That isn’t hard to do, but it harder to keep track of.
The way I was considering was to knit the project in the round, with a steek to cut afterwards, so I could knit in one solid line always starting at the beginning. But that also adds the issue of the steek and a very heavy project.
As it stands, I don’t know what is the best way to go or if I’ll even start the project. I’m going to work on formatting the code, since it’s too big for most documents to hold without crashing. Maybe I’ll figure it out somehow.
Perseverance is the name of the game. This double knit scarf took me a year to finish. The pattern itself wasn’t overly hard, once you get the hang of working two strands, but it was repetitive and time consuming.
Each row took roughly 5 minutes (mostly observing the chart and alternating colors) and each section had about 50 rows that I repeated 12 times.
I would work a few rows then pick up a different project that held my interest more until I came back to it again.
But finally I got close enough to the end to do a final push over a week to just get it done.
And honestly I’m glad it’s finished and it won’t take up space on my night stand anymore.
I’m happy with the finished product and will likely start another difficult project that I can pick up and put down between my smaller projects.
