All About Creating The New Province : Madura

The declaration of a new province called Madura has been started for 6 months before the judicial review which scheduled to be held in this year. Madura has been issued to be new province since the beginning of 2016 but until this article was published, their capability still calls into doubt. The creation of new province in Indonesia is a classical issue which has so many cons, particularly from the current provinces or the other regions. As a Javanese who has Maduranese bloodline, I personally think that it's not a good idea. Even though there are many advantages of being a new province, the risk and disadvantages need to be considered. In this post, I will share my personal opinion about this issue.

The Risk and Disadvantages
1. If the facilities were not provided equally, it couldn't stabilize its governmental system quickly.
2. It's triggering the other region to create another new province. It can be very dangerous for the country.
3. The economic policy of Madura still based on East Java, leaving Java means new economic policy
4. They will hire the new workers (governor, staffs, officials, etc) it means that Indonesia has to spend (more) money than it has to be.

 Frequently Asked Questions
1. Will the demand for creation of new provinces stop at the creation of Madura Province?
answer : I'm not sure, but I think it's just the beginning. It won't stop as long as the central government doesn't have an absolute rule for this. 
 
2. Will a series of such demands not be dangerous for the country?
answer : It's very dangerous, it will create virulent ethnicity
 
3. Will the creation of such new provinces not lead to the bankruptcy of the country?
answer : I'm not sure, it depends on the new province performance

4. How much expenditure more will be required to run these new provinces?
answer : Based on the data from Service Delivery and Financial Management of New Province in 2007 (Gorontalo). A new province spent 1,5 bn/years with growing rate around 0,2 bn/years since 2007. It will cost Rp 3,700,000,000,000 in 2017 only for government administration.

If It's Realized, What They Have to Do?

As the new province, Madura has to develop and manages the entire cities in the island then classify the cities into a system that based on its natural resources. Just remember, Madura doesn't consist of downtown or metropolitan area. It's only medium island with hundreds of small island which surrounded by the ocean. So what they need the most is developing their maritime sector.

(to be continued)

Food Crisis In Indonesia : How Could It Be?

We usually heard many people talk about issues related to the food crisis in Indonesia. World top five agricultural country title seems cannot avoid Indonesia from this issue. Furthermore, there are many Meme pictures state "Only in Indonesia..." which aggravate the country image. Because many Indonesians think that it's impossible for Indonesia to get involved in the food crisis. When it really happens, some Indonesians start to blame the government without learning more about it. Without understand why the crisis could be happened, even in the agricultural country.

Maybe some of us are thinking that it's only happened in Indonesia. In fact, many other agricultural countries ever face the same issue. Such as Russia, China, Poland, Germany, or even the United States. Russia experienced it in 2016 because of the lack dairy and meat supplies. China involved on this crisis in last 3 years because of the lax food safety. Poland has to face the crisis in the middle of 1981 because of economic crisis and food shortages. Germany closed more than 4700 farms in 2011 because of contaminated animal feed, worth million tons of meat supplies. The United States still stand with their rising food price this month, put them into massive food crisis in American history.

There is the misconception about the factor that may cause the crisis. The main reason for food crisis is not only because the foods are unavailable but also because people cannot afford the available food which caused by many factors. Such as natural disasters, conflicts, and global food prices. 

Natural Disaster

Natural disaster has the great impact on the food crisis. Whether it's happened in the food source area (production), in the area of distribution (customer), or in shipment area between the two parties (shipment process and warehouse storage). East Java is the largest producer of rice in Indonesia with global distribution area. Once it attacked by natural disaster, rice supply in the central market suddenly down, result in the lack of rice stock in the central market and the local price will be rise shortly. The same thing can happen in the different situation. Sumatera island market price depends on Java island. South Sumatera is a province that mainly conducts Java with Sumatera island. When the natural disaster occurs and the deliveries stopped in South Sumatera. It can affect the stock price in the island. Now, we can understand why people cannot afford the food because of the natural disaster. The over price food means disaster for the poor.

Conflicts

Conflicts are the other reason why food crisis could happen in Indonesia. It may cause people losing the job. Losing the source of money. When the money runs out, they cannot afford the food. Territorial conflicts also cause people unable to get the food from the other territory which has the better food supply. In some cases, the parties within conflicts are blocking the food supply for the rebels. Sometimes, it does not only affect the rebels but also the other civilians. The delivery of the food is harder in this state. Particularly if the aid workers are attacked or the supplies are looted.

Global Market Price

Global Market Price is not affected too much in Indonesia during its high export capability. But in some commodities like cereals, it can be very serious problem. Cereals listed as the top Indonesia import in 2015. Worth of USD 3.2 billion per years or equal to IDR 41.5 trillion. It's almost 2.3% of total import cost of the country. Small different change of the global market price would be the great impact for the local market price. When it happens, the crisis becomes a reality.

Goodbye

Tonight I feel this thing (again).

The days passed, but I still can't control my feeling.

This song reminds me of my aunt.I love her so much.
For 22 years she raised me just like her own son.

She passed away several weeks ago. Leave me here without saying goodbye.

She loves this kind of song. An old song which sang by a couple of artist.

I know, the song can't replace her in my heart, not even once.
But at least, I just want to remember her through this song.

Listen !

Sometimes I get myself too hard by thinking about the daily article content in my blog. It makes me slower and not productive. Until someday I realize that :

“Hey dude, everything you wrote here is not pieces of poem or novel, stop overthinking bout it”

Alright, now we know the solution. The best result is not always the perfect one. Don’t waste our time by doing nothing because of one unresolved problem. Get deal with it and moving on.


 

2 Things That I Want in 5 Years

(source : pinterest)

 

A Beautiful Garden

Having a wonderful garden is one of my dreams. Beautiful landscape, shiny greenhouse, modern utensils, hidroponic farm, and colourful plants included in one large yard around my dream house. It would be nice, relaxable and comfortable, not only for me but also for my family. In colonial gardening, peoples usually choose the vast they want to plant in their garden. In mine, I prefer to put every plants with such organized pattern. Such as Perennials, shrubs, climbers, trees, grasses, ferns, bamboos, bulbs, fruit, hedging, Mediterranean plants, bedding plants, and roses. 

Green garden (source : pinterest)

Making several changes is needed to bring a gorgeous garden landscape. Adding elevated steps to the front of my house door to add another dimension and texture, framed with bright-color flowers and plants. When colonial gardening is well known because their labyrinth path, I would rather build winding path, formed by white rocky road and snaked borders. In the middle of the front, there will be round medium-size fountain which functioned to reflect the sunlight. Well-conditioned bushes, small trees, rounded stone, and small pond on the left side of winding path. The opposite side will decorated with floral variety border arranged with roses, catmint, delphinium and rare plants.   

An Enjoyable Farm and House

Farm and Houses in Switzerland (source : pinterest)

Beside of having a garden, there's no other way to keep in touch with the nature, except by adding more creatures like animal. In certain way, they are better than the plants. It can move and has relaxing sound. I love to hear the sound of clucking chickens, mooing cattles, chirping grasshoppers, quacking ducks, barking dogs, purring cats, and many more. That's why I really want to have a farm someday.

Dining room with vintage nuances from Teak woods (source : pinterest)

As I live in the farm, there are two ideas for the housing style : modificate the barn into housebarn or build it separately from my house. The first idea is reflecting the housing style in american country and rural area such as Ohio, Texas, and Alabama. By modificating the barn, the advantages are my family and I as the owner doesn't have to walk outside while feeding or watching a medical issue on the animals such as birth of young animal. But the disadvantages are the animal noises, which often can be disruptive when an animal has sick and there are unwanted pests like mice. In the contrary, when I decide to build it separately, it maybe easier to control the noises, house or barn expansion, but it's getting harder to protect the animals. Consider to the problems that may caused by the condition above, I prefer to build the house with normal housing style and build the barn at the outside.

Antique bookcase looks so elegant (source : pinterest)

Despite build a normal house, I still want to build it with housebarn style, but its function just like the other houses. Through the solid and strong structure, the house will be exposed with dark green teak woods for indoor installations. Bright dining room with open layout, light colored walls, and a vintage poster of cow hanged on the wall. In the bedroom, there will be two large antique beds and oil lamps from the early of 1900s to bring more historical nuances. Right in front of my room, I put a floor-to-ceiling bookcase which holds a collection of farming vintage books such as the history of the farm, instruction, list of the tools we have, harvesting record, and marketing. All of those are based on our farm experiences.

Bright bedroom with two beds (source : pinterest)

Never Follow Your Desire, Just Follow Your Heart

Every person always want to start the day with happiness. Doing every little thing that can make them feel happy. Such as enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, having a conversation with someone they love, watching tv together with their family, etc. But while we get the happiness, we forget if some of us, somewhere outside is never have the same chance. Ignoring, is the only reason why we can't get the true of happiness. 

What is the true meaning of happiness. Smiling or laughing? No, that's only our expression for a short time. When we stop smiling and laughing, we can't get the happiness anymore. Because smiling and laughing won't stay longer. As a human, we never feel enough with ourself. Feel sad and disappointed when we can't get what we want. Get jealous on someone's achievement but we pretend to be happy for them. We never get enough because we set our life just like a perfect masquerade. Not like it supposed to be.

(to be continued...)

Weekend with My Buddies

On last saturday I had a duty to brought 3 of my friends from UMS Malaysia to Mojokerto, I ask Ahong and Jono to come out with me. My malaysian friend will take on the job training course in PT. Multi Bintang Indonesia (MBI). The days before, Mr. Jadid as my lecturer ask me to bring them there by using Uber as our transportation. However, it may cost more than the budget that he given to me. Therefore I borrow Jono's car and luckily he also has a schedule in Mojokerto on that day, so we can go together. 

Following the instruction from Mr Jadid, I decide that our first destination is Mr Sutrisno house because it would be their inn for 1 month. After reach Mojokerto, we are looking for Mr. Sutrisno house which located near the factory and that's true, the home is next to the factory. The house looks fabulous, rocky road along the way, so many threes as far as i can see, and there is paddy field in front of the house. First look, the house has big door which can accomodate a buffalo. Get inside, a traditional housing style was presented with modern materials and furnitures. It has 8 bedrooms in first floor and 2 bedrooms in second floor, musholla, three bathroom and one kitchen as well. Room space is wide but there's only few furnitures. Each bedrooms has its own 2x2 window, fan, shelf, and bed. The two-way stairs is placed on the opposite of the bathroom. The bathroom is clean, wide, has big tube and shower. Dining room is located in the back, just right before the kitchen entry. 

After check the inn condition, I ask my Malaysian friends to fill the payment for 1 month to Mr. Sutrisno. I'm so worry about their further communication with the housekeeper, that's why I finish all of their administration fee on that day. Then we pray ashar together and have a conversation with Mr. Sutrisno and his family for a while. On the evening, Jono ask me, Ahong, and our Malaysian friends to join a dinner together with his family in a restaurant.

My Culinary Experiences

Hello guys, come back again with me. Now in this post we gonna talk about foodie. On the earlier post, I already told you about eating as my hobby. Now I want to share my experience in exploring the taste of many foods in Surabaya, my lovely hometown. There are so many recommended culinary spots here. Therefore I dare to try every single food, especially traditional food which can be found only in Surabaya.  

Actually, I don't have any favorite food so I can try every food that I want but I prefer to choose the food with umami flavor or some food which has broth on it, such as Soto, Bakso, Rawon, etc. I still have to avoid some food that bad for my health. Like the food with high cholesterol content or food which can affect my body glucose level.

I really want to post an article with a short story and review of the food based on its flavor, price, spot nuance and the service. I can’t be sure that I can post each single moment of my culinary experience. Because I'm gonna be so busy with my new job. So I will keep this post up to date only with photos and the review from me, I feel so sorry for that. However, I will keep trying to resume the post when I have a time. If you want to know more about any specific food I’d post or maybe if you want me to try some kind of food, just let me know by send me the email at adzimhilman@gmail.com. I will take my time to read your email and reply it as fast as I can.

Before I start the review section, this is the explanation of my rating system :

Sate Kambing Sedayu
(K.H Mas Mansyur Street 90)

Sate or Satay is a grilled goat meat (chevon) stabbed with thin stick. Added with beans and soy sauce then roasted for a while. The taste is overally good, but they miss the meat maturation so it tastes like raw meat. One stick consist of 4 cuts: shoulder cuts, forequarter cut, liver and lard. The price is more expensive compared with the other grilled chevon (it's cost IDR 50.000, the normal price is around IDR 30.000 - IDR 35.000). The food stall open from 18.00 PM until 01.00 AM.

My personal review for this food is gonna be like this : 6.5
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (good: delicious, still the best Sate i've found so far)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮ (below average: more expensive than the other chevon Satay)

Nuance : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (above average: small traditional stall, but it brings middle-east nuance)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (good:fast, polite, and good looking staff)

Martabak Sekar Sari(Kusuma Bangsa street, right in front of Hi-tech Mall)

Martabak is one of my favorite food. There are two kinds of Martabak, Egg Martabak and Sweet Martabak. For the Egg Martabak, it's made of chicken egg, small cut beef, wheat flour, onion, garlic, scallion, pepper and salt for the seasoning. While the sweet one is made of wheat flour, salt, milk, chocolate powder, sugar, chicken egg, margarine, and baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate). The difference of these things is in the ingredients and how it's cooked. 

Basically, Egg Martabak need three steps : 

1. Prepare the Martabak skin from the wheat flour and oil. 

2. Make the mixture : put the seasoning, beef, onion, garlic, scallion, and pepper in the egg batter.

3. Fry the skin in fully boiled oil, put the mixture on the skin, fold the skin until covering the mixture.

Sweet Martabak also has three steps :

1. Make the batter by adding the milk, egg, sugar, salt, and wheat flour.

2. Cook the cake on frying pan with margarine and spread it around frying pan. 

3. Prepare the chocolate, bean, and cheese powder. Then pour it over the cake while it cooked.

The reason why I explain the process is to make sure that you 'll understand what i said in my review.

Mekar Sari Egg Martabak
It has ordinary size but it's thinner than the others. There are two possibilities : first, maybe the beef cube cut is too small, it will affect the size. Second, it could be that the egg is too small or maybe they lack of egg because normally it needs three until four eggs for medium size Martabak. The skin also too thin, they surely need to add more flour and egg to make thicker skin instead of making the wider thin skin. It's not well cooked, showed by scorched skin on its surface. The taste is good overall, but maybe it will be better if it gets saltier. I suggest to add a teaspoon of salt in the batter or the most extreme way is change the chicken egg with duck egg which has saltier taste.

Mekar Sari Sweet Martabak  

The cake is thick, soft, and well baked, almost perfect. It's full of sweet chocolate and bean sauce but lacks of cheese. The milk taste is not over there, they should add more milk in the batter. The full texture is good but after they cut it, the texture is not the same. There are shorter, longer, smaller and bigger pieces. 

My personal review for this food is... 6.3
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Not good enough, but it's still above the average)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Very cheap : The price is IDR 20, normal price IDR 25-35)

Nuance : N/A (Sorry but I can't give any rating for this because I bring it to my home)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Fast enough)

Bakso Buto

(Kalasan st. 34)

The name of Bakso Buto refers to giant bakso (buto is giant monster in javanese myth). This food is one of many product which served in Kalasan st because there are so many food stalls along this road. Just like the other local bakso, it consist of beef meatballs, bihun, siomay, tofu, fried wonton, fermented soybean and its soup. The different of this bakso is its name and the meatball size which is bigger than the ordinary meatball. They also cut the meatball from the top to the middle to create flower-like shape, looks good. The fried wonton, siomay and tofu is a little bit tasteless while the big meatball has better taste but the texture is not compact enough. The price is still too expensive for 1 bowl (it's cost IDR 20.000. Normally, it's only cost around IDR 10.000-15.000). I think they need to add toasted onion over the soup for an extra smell and taste.  

My personal review for this food is... 5.25
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮ (Average)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮ (The price is IDR 20, normal price is IDR 10-15)

Nuance : ✮✮✮✮✮ (wide space is good for consument but too many street performers here)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Fast service and polite staff)

One of My Hobbies : Eating

I like to post many foods in my path recently. Every kind of foods started from the veggies, fruit, protein, till dairy food. I always take the picture right before I eat the food by visiting some restaurants or food stalls. I begin the “feeding frenzy” up to 21.00 PM or sometime in the middle of the night when everyone is too lazy to get out from their bed. My purposes are to fill my stomach, to review the food stalls or the restaurants that I visit, and to share my culinary experience. So far, I have a lot of respond about it. There are so many questions which my friends asked me about. They ask me why I like to eat so many food, did I have food allergy, how much money that I spend on culinary tour, what food that I like or hate the most, and one of my favorite question “Why I can’t be fat?”

In order to answer all of the questions, I write the answer from the first to the last question.

Why I like to eat so many foods

Eating is one of my hobbies. I usually eat the meal four or six times a day, rarely to be three times a day like the normal person. It will be eight or nine times if the snack was included on it. If you ask me why, well... I just like doing it, it’s kinda a bad habit for me.

Did I have food allergy

Luckily, I don’t have any allergy relate with food. Even though I’m pretty sure that I can eat everything but I confine myself with some kind of food. Such as instant food and snack which contain MSG or its equivalent.

How much money that I spend on the culinary tour

I don’t know exactly. But according to the Guy Principle, it said that “when we get the menu, look at the price first then we can choose the food”. But sometimes I forget about it.

What food that I like or hate the most

I love squid and octopus but I hate fish, especially undercooked fish like sashimi

Why I can’t get fat

I avoid some food which contains so many carbohydrates. But it doesn’t mean that I never eat any starchy food. I have the responsibility for my food and keep the healthy food as my choice. Rarely eat food which has so much fatty acid (maybe only 2 times in a week) and prefer low sugar drinks (likes Lenten Tea) and beverages to the sweet one. Another tip is by doing an exercise, I usually have jogging for 20-40 minutes in the morning.

Happy Eid Mubarak

Idul Fitri is the special day for moslem in my country. Everyone’s always waiting for it and prepare lot of things to do during the day when it comes. We celebrate the moment with our families and neighbours. In the morning we start the day with eid prayer or well-known as shalat eid. After perform the shalat, we come back to our home and meet our family to ask for forgiveness. Started with our family, our neighbours, our friends or maybe everyone that we have ever meet before. ‘Cause in this day we believe that Allah (moslem’s God) will bless us just if we realize our sins in the past.

In my family tradition, we have some things to do during the day. We wake up in the morning to take a bath and wear clean clothes to perform shalat shubuh (fajr). After that, we go to the nearest mosque or field to perform shalat eid together with the other moslems and listen to the khutbah (speech). When we have done the shalat, we come back to our home and ask for forgiveness to our parents. Then we have breakfast together as a small family. A hours later when we ensure that everybody’s come from the shalat eid, we visit our neighbours one by one to greet them and ask for forgiveness. Not only with the other moslem, but also with our non-moslem neighbours. If we can’t ask for forgiveness directly, we usually ask for forgiveness by phone or just send them a message.


 

Shopping (?)

Today I go shopping with three of my friends, Djeh, Ahok and Brewok.  We are looking for a gift for Siska, our classmate.  She has final graduation test on this afternoon, so we want to give her a little surprise. Actually, we don't know what kind of gift that she likes, thus maybe we will randomly choose the gift. But at last, Ahok has an idea to buy her a dress, Brewok wants to give her a piece of bikini (he wants to buy it for real) while I and Jeh still don't have any idea. But the biggest problem is.. we don’t have enough budget to get all of those things #lol.

On 11.00 AM we go to the Karita Moslem Square which located in Ngagel. Karita is a clothes shop in Surabaya who offers both male and female branded clothes and other things related with Moslem. It also has many souvenirs with a good price. Plus, you can wrap your items right on the spot without additional fee. After an hours, we decide to buy two gifts, one from them (Ahok, Djeh, and Brewok) and another one from me.

I buy this book, hope she likes it

Why I like Reading

Reading a book is one of my hobbies. I like reading because I‘m looking for a new vocabulary and I want to learn about the writing style from any different authors. I like to study English literature and I always admire it. Started from the simple books like non-fictional books ‘till the tricky one like fictional books. 

My favorite genre is Old Plays (fictional). I like Old Plays because it can teach me about live, how people used to be, and how was society in the past. Although I often can’t fully understand what it means, I always looking for it. Now I had read a lot of plays written by Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare. I read all of his books for free through online library ‘cause I don't want to buy any books from the local bookstore. You know, it’s kinda expensive here, especially for any foreign language literature. 

My favorite author is J.R.R. Tolkien, a man who writes fantasy novel The Lord of The Rings in 1954.  I only read three of his books, Tree and Leaf (1964), The Return of The King (1955), and Bilbo’s Last Song (1990). I adore him because he is so genius with his high-fantasy mind, he can bring the readers into his world with such an incredible details. Moreover, Tolkien also has an insane talent on creating beautiful language. When you read his book you will understand how Tolkiens use such a weird complex phrases and sentences that you may never heard before. Here I show you one of the paragraphs in his 5^th book, The Return of The King 

“A light kindled in the sky, a blaze of yellow fire behind dark barriers Pippin cowered back, afraid for a moment, wondering into what dreadful country Gandalf was bearing him. He rubbed his eyes, and then he saw that it was the moon rising above the eastern shadows, now almost at the full. So the night was not yet old and for hours the dark journey would go on. He stirred and spoke.”

(Return of the King, Chapter 1 : Minas Tirith)

In last 3 months i had been reading 10 books, 8 of it is had been done yesterday while the rest is still ongoing. Here is the list of the books :

1. Plays of Oscar Wilde – Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) by Oscar Wilde

2. Return of The King (1955) by Tolkien

3. Woman in White (1859) by Wilkie Collins

4. Tree and Leaf (1964) by Tolkien

5. The Importance of Being Earnest (1896) by Oscar Wilde

6. Vera or, The Nihilists (1880) by Oscar Wilde

7. Bilbo’s Last Song (1990) by Tolkien

[Ongoing]

8. The Writings of Abraham Lincoln (1905) by Arthur Brooks Lapsley

9. The Comedy of Errors (1954) by William Shakespeare

10. A Treatise of Human Nature (1738) by David Hume