The case for >1L water bottles

I may be a water bottle enthusiast (i.e. I love looking at water bottles and think about buying them all the time, and the ones I get given I can never seem to let go of, even if they’re just one of those free McDonald’s bottles), but it wasn’t until last year that I started regularly carrying a water bottle with me on a daily basis. What changed, you asked? It’s simply that I stopped carrying around 600ml bottles and pushed myself to carry double. 600ml bottles are a liability! You spend more time carrying them empty in your bag than filled, and they just end up sitting in your bag and weighing you down. My 1.2L bottle, on the other hand, sustains me all day long. Is it heavy? Yes absolutely. But there’s also the fact that it contains enough water for me to feel like I’d never run out! My days may take unexpected turns, I may suddenly find myself in places that make me nervous, but I can breathe easy knowing my bottle is most likely not empty.

This is all the more important as someone who likes her water ice cold at all times. My 1.2L bottle gives me the security of having cold water whenever. Sure you can refill your 600ml once you’ve emptied it, but you can’t always guarantee finding water at your preferred temperature wherever you go. I make sure to fill mine whenever I leave the house, with cold water — sometimes ice — straight from my fridge, and I’m good for most of the day. I’m truly a better person for it.

Spooky Lake Month

I’m not a big Halloween person. Most years, I’m oblivious to its arrival until the question “what are you going to be for Halloween?” starts getting thrown around left and right. It’s always too late for good ideas, and always feels too hot in Jakarta to be anything but my cropped-top-and-jeans-wearing self. I honestly want to be a Halloween girlie so bad my laziness always gets the best of me.

These past three years though, I finally found my Halloween-related fixation, which, while it doesn’t require dressing up, gets me in the mood. It’s this thing called Spooky Lake Month on TikTok, specifically on this account run by a lovely woman named Geo Rutherford, who, per her bio, is an artist and a teacher. Every day throughout the month of October, she publishes what she calls “haunted hydrology” a.k.a. eerie trivia about different bodies of water around the world. So far this year, she’s covered the Alaskan mud flats, Mexico’s Cenotes, spent fuel pools at nuclear reactors… all of which I didn’t know are things that exist out there in the world.

As someone who is always thinking of sharks and dead bodies when swimming in pools, following these stories doesn’t really help with these irrational thoughts, but they’re fascinating nonetheless — and you get to indulge on 31 of them all month. A fantastic way of getting in the Halloween spirit. Maybe this will motivate me enough to dress up this year?

Birthday wishlists

Birthday surprise gifts are great, but have you ever told your friends what you wanted and have them come together to get you exactly that? For Avi’s birthday, Rara suggested she come up with a document that lists things in her wishlist, complete with the Tokopedia links if she wanted to, and share it with friends to use as a reference for gift giving.

“You shouldn’t just be treating yourself for your birthday. Your friends should be treating you too,” was her rationale.

Avi did come up with one, and in the weeks leading up to her birthday we started putting down our name to tag stuff on that list, “wedding inventory”-style. I love that this list didn’t just make it easy for friends to peep what it is that the birthday celebrant wants — a sort of shortcut to getting the perfect gift — but it also works as a kind of “prompt” for ideas.

Avi’s list particularly has columns for gift categories (“Cute stuff'“, “body care”, “beverage station”, to name a few"), and short notes on why she wants each item. One note says she’s been decorating her home, another notes her love for teas.

We asked Rara to do the same thing for her birthday — which is in a few minutes as I write this! October 8! Libra queen! Rara’s categories include “Books”, “Productivity”, “Appliances”. During her birthday dinner earlier this evening, it was delightful to watch Rara unbox her gifts. Some a surprise, others coming straight from her list/brief.

Perhaps sharing this list is a sign of trust, too. Trusting that friends will not judge you for your desires, and, most of all, trusting that they’ll come through once you’ve taken the vulnerable path of expressing them.

10/10 would recommend. :-)

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I missed the Wednesday essay again this week, which means you can expect one coming your way over the weekend. :D

1. How many layers of crunch do you need?

In life, there are products that are great, and then there are products that push the boundary of what you know is great. Products that make you think: “I didn’t know you could make it like that?” or “why isn’t the rest made like this? or “why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?” These products don’t just deliver on a basic functional level. They take your experience up a notch, and manage to do so with just the tiniest tweaks.

Anyway.

I’ve developed an addiction for GuriBee Layers, which is one such product. It’s chips, but instead of a single piece of chip, it sticks four pieces together in such a way that every bite you take is one layer collapsing on top of another layer, and another, and another. It’s crunch you didn’t know you needed. Crunch that is completely unnecessary, to be honest, but once you’ve tried it, you’d wish other chips had had it in them to deliver an experience so delightful. I’m obsessed!

2. Two-person group chats

At some point earlier this year, Avi and I whined about our days, trauma dumped, discussed potential projects, brainstormed ideas for other projects, all within a single WhatsApp chat. Whenever Avi needed input on a project she was working on, she’d reach out on the chat. Whenever I wanted to talk about ideas for this newsletter, for which Avi is often a go-to brainstorm partner, I’d look up her name and dump it on the chat too. Which means all of that would often overlap with stray rants about our days, sometimes literal mental breakdowns, lol. A regular day on the chat looked something like this:

Avi: Here’s my moodboard for the visuals!
Avi: I saw this cool thing and thought I’d try it out
Me: Ugh brooo I’m so lonely
Me: Lol I’m mellow
Me: But yes thanks I’ll check this out!
Avi: Oh noo that sucks, did something happen?
Me: This looks great I love the colorsss
Me: Nah I think I’m about to be on my period
Avi: Sameee I’m literally on Day 1
Me: Btw I have new content ideas

At least until one day I decided to create a separate chat dedicated to discussing projects. It’s a basic group chat, but with the same two people who also still talk to each other about other stuff on their regular “general” chat. Like Slack but for two. You get the idea.

As with other things I bring up in my Friday letters, this one may not necessarily be new or original. But, hey, consider this a reminder that you do not have to be a group to have a group chat! Normalize group chats for two! It can just be a dedicated space for you and a friend, or maybe even a significant other, to discuss a specific topic without having it get in the way of your day-to-day conversation.

If I was living with a roommate, for example, I can see myself having a two-person group chat dedicated to housekeeping, so as to separate that stuff from our friendship. Or, idk, if you and a friend are trying to keep each other accountable on a common goal, having a two-person group chat could be a way of making sure that common goal was constantly being followed-up and discussed without having to cut back on important life gossip (I can totally see two-person groups dedicated to scholarship applications, for example).

Compartmentalization is great, and all the more so between two people who happen to be entangled in more ways than one. I now have several ongoing two-person group chats and my life has changed for the better.

3. “Skip and Loafer” and Netflix parties!

Aidil, a good friend of mine who is based in Bali, sold this anime to me with a few keywords: friendships! crushing! friendship crushing! And we ended up watching five episodes in two days using Netflix Party (now called Teleparty) — which I did for the first time in 2020 during the pandemic and am happy to discover still works great today!

“Skip and Loafer” follows Mitsumi Iwakura, a top-of-her-class student from Japan’s most remote prefecture who moves to Tokyo to attend one of the city’s top prep schools. The show follows her days as she navigates big feelings in the big city where she has set big ambitious goals for herself. It’s about long distance friendships, navigating social anxiety, being used to exceeding expectations and discovering yourself a pretty average kid in a sea of excellent peers… each episode is a short 20-minutes packed with warmth and humor. 10/10 would recommend if you’re looking for a quick watch to savor with your nasi padang over lunch.

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In this week’s pleasure list, I talk about going out when you don’t feel like it, Twitter drama, and my latest food fixation. Hope you find something here for you.

Thank you for being here. I MEAN IT. <3

Going out and performing yourself

Yesterday Erin texted me to go out to a social event where there would be beers and a lot of people I didn’t know, and I told her I’d be there before I could fully make up my mind about actually going. It takes a lot for me to voluntarily place myself in the midst of dozens of new people, especially when there isn’t really an “event”, when you’re just expected to mingle and … *dun dun dunnnnn* … converse.

I showed up anyway, despite my mind telling me to not to go, and to no one’s surprise, I had a good time! While, sure, there ended up being more familiar faces than I had anticipated, which made navigating the unfamiliar easier, I’ll admit I enjoyed getting out of my element! Just a little bit. What I mean by going out of my element is I enjoyed not talking to myself in my head, in my room, and actually having to perform myself. Meeting people, introducing myself, telling them what I do, are all great exercise for actually being and I needed that.

For example, in my head I tell myself I’m a writer and that label is good enough for me. As long as I’m publishing this newsletter, it doesn’t really matter what writer I am. Just getting to write this is good enough for me. But this label alone isn’t enough when you’re meeting new people; people will want to know what I write, which forces me to practice describing my writing and describing myself, something I wouldn’t have to do in the comfort of my room or my favorite coffee shop with no one around.

The whole thing made me feel like someone. Like I wasn’t just an idea or an outline of a person. I still have trouble describing what writing it is that I do, but now I have something new to think about.

Lucy Dacus x Matty Healy drama

I woke up this morning pretty shaken by photos of Kylie Jenner’s phone circulating on Twitter, where her lock screen appears to show a photo of her and Timothee Chalamet set as wallpaper. But what I’m here to say is don’t let it distract you from another gem of a PopCrave-tweeted news: Matty Healy deactivating his Twitter account after getting @ by Lucy Dacus.

Matty Healy, had apparently tweeted saying:

I told Lucy Dacus that ‘Boygenius’ had inspired me and George to start a new band called ‘Girlretard’. I don’t really hear from her that often.

To which Lucy replied:

I love this interaction and love even more that it prompted him to deactivate because… weren’t they all at the same Era’s Tour just a few months ago? (They were!) I’m pretty sure Phoebe Bridgers' Eras opening gigs coincided with the four or five or so Eras shows that Matty Healy had made headlines for attending, and Lucy and Julien Baker had been there too. Did they not all share a VIP tent at some point?

It just makes me giggle, thinking of how the Boygenius literally got front row seats to the Taylor Swift x Matty Healy era (an era that I loved, btw, I have a draft somewhere on my Substack about how I think everyone should’ve just let the two date lol), and how they must be thinking the whole time: “canon event, canon event, canon event” or something like that. This Twitter interaction has me imagining backstage interactions in which Lucy, Julien, and Phoebe just had to make nice with this good-for-nothing man out of respect for their absolute queen of a friend. Ah, celebrities. They’re just like us indeed!!!

Anyways, I love Lucy. For her music, her cutting lyrics, her stage swagger, and her tweets. This one from when Obama had Boygenius on his summer playlist is pretty much my Roman Empire.

Food fixation

If you’re going to spend Rp95.000++ on a meal around Senopati, South Jakarta, consider Mister Sunday’s Pork Belly Sambal Matah. I’m not exactly pork crazy, but I occasionally make exceptions for the dish when it’s crispy, juicy, and comes paired with a good condiment. There aren’t that many options that tick those boxes in Jakarta outside of the North or West? I’m not sure. But Mister Sunday’s feels special in that no cut is too chunky to embody both crispiness and juiciness! Texture and taste! One may argue their sambal matah isn’t “authentic”, more of a marriage of matah and dabu-dabu if you ask me, given the amount of tiny diced tomatoes in it, but that’s exactly what makes it work. Just when things feel like they’re about to get too spicy, the tomatoes balance it out.

I’ve been so fixated on this dish for a month that I’m really starting to limit my visit to this place. It’s getting to a point where the staff know my order before I can even decide where to sit — which is cute if it’s a coffee order at a coffee shop, but somehow less cute when it’s a whole meal? Can someone tell me what brand of shame this is? Lol.

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This week I have just three things to gush about. I think, moving forward, this will be the bare minimum for my Friday newsletter. Three items minimum, five items max sounds nice and doable, amen.

I hope you have a nice weekend!

Moka pot coffee

Ah, there’s nothing like an “aesthetic” version of an old, pretty ubiquitous object to stop you on your tracks and give it proper attention. In my case, it took this cow print Bialetti moka pot for me to finally consider making this brewing technique a part of my daily coffee routine and I’m so happy I did! I didn’t end up buying the cow print version — it’s still in my Tokopedia cart but my no0b qualifications simply does not justify the price. Earlier this year, when a friend offered a classic metal Bialetti he had gotten for free at an event, I jumped at it. I’ve been obsessed. So obsessed, in fact, that just two weeks into using it, I had to admit myself to the ER from the worst case of gastric acid in my life. I was putting the moka pot to use 3x a day to try to get the hang of it, which I should have known was too much coffee than my stomach could handle. We love to learn things the hard way over here.

After a five-month break from it (and a far stricter coffee intake), I’m finally back! Limited to one moka pot serving per day, but I’m back.

While some say the moka pot isn’t exactly the perfect espresso, it really is great to have a simple tool that can produce something close enough to it. Homemade coffee I can add cream/milk to that tastes great and packs a punch. But what I enjoy the most about the moka pot is the process; every cup of coffee is a lab experiment and I get to play scientist. The idea that it brews directly over fire (or heat), the idea that your coffee is brewing upwards? UGHH SO FUN. Watching coffee gush out of the pipe and into the upper chamber of the pot is the highlight of my day. I pour the coffee into my cup while looking forward to the next time I get to do it all over again.

It takes everything in me to not make moka pot coffee three times a day. I’m really trying to be a better person. :-S

A Netflix docu to watch! with! friends!

Speaking of coffee… The Netflix documentary on the Olivier Vietnamese coffee death is about to come out this month and I’ve just been reminded of just how mind-boggling and honestly terrifying the whole case was. This period of domestic news cycle feels so far away now (and not to mention so visually foreign!!! — which is a whole other train of thought I’ll probably explore in a future write-up), but I happened to watch a preview of it and for 1.5 hour I was sucked right back to 2016, which feels like the last time TV had something truly compelling to offer.

I thought the docu would be worth mentioning here not just because it feels bound to be widely discussed and is worth mentally bookmarking, but also because I find my viewing experience perhaps worth recommending, which is to watch it with friends! Being a spectator among a divided crowd is exactly what it was like to follow the case at the time, so watching it as a group feels like an immersive way of revisiting the story. So much has happened ~in the world~ that I’ve simply forgotten all memory of the case. Not even the names of the girls rang a bell when a friend first mentioned the docu. But watching it with others, feeling the vibe shift when new facts were presented, seeing everyone — myself included — wobble their way to a firm opinion put me right back there.

If you’re looking to fit a movie night with friends two weeks-ish from now, here’s a title worth considering. I promise I’m not just saying this because I’m a wimp. :’)

The tube girl

There’s this game I play with myself where I listen to Beyonce’s “Partition” on my MRT trips and try to stay cool. The most I let myself get away with is a hard head bop to the beat, and even then I’d feel like the whole car was staring.

These past two weeks I’ve been obsessed with the “Tube Girl”, as TikTok has named her, who films herself dancing in a London tube car on her commute. Watching her feels cathartic. Like entertaining that tiny part of my brain that says I could probably get away with dropping it low to “Partition” in the MRT if I wanted to. Like the only thing getting in the way was my obsession with other people’s perception of me. That and actual dance skills.

What’s that thing people say? That nobody cares as much as you think, because everyone’s just thinking of themselves? I’ve always suspected that is true, and Tube Girl is that whole concept personified. (Of course it helps that she’s beautiful, young, and thin, and there’s nothing the world loves to see than a conventionally beautiful woman take up space in unconventional ways… but that’s not fun to think about).

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Ahhh, my first Friday post. This completes my first week of publishing three times a week. I WELCOME CLAPS AND COMPLIMENTS. I am having that quintessential writer-committed-to-a-schedule experience in which I write the thing from the depths of a hangover. It is not fun, but I also haven’t gone out in a while (uhhh… two weeks) and might have been a little too successful on my mission to finally let loose last night.

Anyway. Fridays are for suggestions. Or more like brief elaborations on things I’ve genuinely enjoyed, that maybe you might too — if not literally then at least conceptually.

Have a great weekend and see you at The Debrief on Monday!

1. I really enjoyed reading this Ask Polly answer to the question “how do you know when your art is bad?”

As someone who has been actively trying to fix her incredibly troubled relationship with her craft, this article is perhaps the single most important piece of writing I can ever read on the fear of making something. I am scared a lot when it comes to writing. So chronically scared I could never commit to it in any real way (somehow committing to writing professionally, in the context of a job, only feels like I’m running away from it). I’m sure there are other great articles out there that address the same ideas, but having read this, I’m also pretty sure I won’t have to read another one. I genuinely would like to bathe in these words, have them tattooed in my brain, rub it on my skin, engage with it in whatever way will heal all of the wounds this fear has brought into my life.

I don’t know, I guess I really needed to hear this:

If you’re pushing yourself to grow and expand and learn and experiment, you sometimes don’t know where you are. This can be true emotionally, creatively, physically, and intellectually.

And this:

So to return to your question HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOUR ART IS GOOD? You don’t know. Even if the world says YES IT’S GOOD HERE TAKE THIS MACARTHUR GENIUS GRANT! Or YES YOU ARE ONE OF THE BEST, HERE TAKE THIS NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE!, you should still pity those prize-winning motherfuckers. Because nothing makes art more difficult than the suspicion that the people around you expect great art from you.

The article is a very long answer to a question so obvious and universal you would think nothing new can be said about it, and yet… it’s brilliant.

2. I love doing focus hours with a long-distance friend

Catching up can sometimes be a drag (ooo hot take), and in the case of someone who’ve just had a really good friend move away, the idea is sometimes more painful/sad than fun because of how much it emphasizes absence. One thing I’ve enjoyed in the past month since Rocky left is doing a sort of “focus-hour” calls where… we’re both on Facetime but to each do our own thing. He’s usually doing a reading assignment for one of his classes, and I’m either writing or reading. One of those calls where you’re on it for the specific purpose of not talking. I guess it’s called “body doubling” in the world of ADHD?

It’s great, because first of all, the sheer presence of another person holds you accountable and pushes you to really get things done. But more than that, I like that doing this keeps our friendship running in realtime, instead of having it be suspended in between “catch-ups”. I like that Rocky gets to be a part of my “mundane” moments, the way he would be if we still lived in the same city, and in that sense he gets to be a part of my day-to-day, still, despite the distance. As someone who lives alone and spends most of her time without other people, these calls also offer a nice window for me to… “perform” myself, I think. Be something other than a slob for an hour or two. Or four.

3. I can’t believe I’m a regular at a spin studio

2023 is the year I got into spinning. I did a class years ago, courtesy of Audi, who is perhaps one of the sportiest of all my friends, and never did it again because I wanted to die. BUT a few months ago Basten, the only other sporty friend in my life other than Audi, notified me of an Ariana Grande-themed spin class and I’ve been a convert ever since. It’s wild how indoor cycling has been a thing for over a decade now and no one briefed me on the idea that it is (or can be) very much a music-driven experience; like you’re basically cycling and vibing to song selections, and these selections are very often excellent! Paired with the right movements, you might just trick your brain into thinking you’re out livin’ it up at Lola (RIP) on a Friday night.

4. I’m on the hunt for the cheapest tequila rack in town

I don’t know how we got here but I’m in my tequila era, sort of. Not that I’ve become a connoisseur, in fact quite the opposite. My standards for a drink have never been lower. I’m just out here to have a good time and to do that, I prefer not to be holding on to a glass like if I’d ordered a gin and tonic. It just gets in the way. Shots are quick, often cheap, and tequila just takes you there with minimal damage the next day — for me anyway. I do still enjoy a glass of beer. In fact, it’s almost like my nights run exclusively in two modes: beer mode, which is the easy and chill sit-down kind over a fun conversation, and tequila mode, which is the part of the night where I prefer being on my feet. I do enjoy a good cocktail, I just don’t currently harbor as much enthusiasm for it. And as for wine…? I guess my life is just the kind that doesn’t call for much wine moments. Not right now anyway. Wine and cocktails are for those in-between moments, when things are about to be a party but not quite there yet. Or when things aren’t meant to be a party at all but they’re fun and probably wholesome. I rarely find myself in between these days. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, it just is.

Anyway. About my hunt. 404 at Wijaya has Rp404k racks (6 shots, which I suppose is the standard?). Ding Dong Disko in Kemang has Rp350k racks. I think The Moon at Monopoli had Rp300k racks the last time I was there??? Wondering what else is out there… Do send tips!!!

5. I’m actively trying to not gatekeep nice thoughts about others

I can’t find the TikTok, but the other day while mindlessly scrolling through the app, I came across a video where this girl basically said she’s been trying compliment strangers more. Not as some creepy or weird exercise, but rather as a practice of voicing out good thoughts (paraphrasing here). Something about this framing of compliments struck me. Like yes, absolutely, why the fuck do we not share genuinely nice thoughts more often? With strangers or not. Why have a good thought and bury it when it may just benefit the other person to hear? Sorry if this all sounds so woowoo, lol, but the suggestion has made me want to investigate my own thought process, especially of the nicer stuff. Where do they go? Why do I let them go at all?

The other day I went out to get coffee and the cafe had a waitlist. The host asked to take my name and when she looked up she had such big, beautiful eyes. So I told her. To see how that would feel. My specific words were: “Mbak, matanya bagus banget deh” in a tone as matter-of-fact as I could muster, hahahh. Her reply: “Omg makasih mbak, I LOVE your hair!”

Past the shock of actually having the courage to blurt out the words, the whole thing actually felt cute! Definitely less traumatizing than I thought it would be.