Jakarta's Best Local Cuisine by Burufly

We love to eat good food. What about Indonesian food? Well, born and raised in Indonesia as Indonesian, of course I do love it. The thing is, I was born and raised in Yogyakarta. Since I took my bachelor degree in Universitas Indonesia, Depok, thus I have lived in Jakarta for 5 years. However, there are still many places in Jakarta that I haven't discovered yet, so does the place to get good food. If I have expat friends ask me about a good place to eat, I surely want to take them to try Indonesian food. Another problem is that I am sometimes clueless about the best place to get them.

I just stumbled upon a website, named Burufly (www.burufly.com). It is a social travel website, that helps travelers to go find inspirations and places to go in Indonesia. There I found an article 'Jakarta's Best Local Cuisine' that's very inspiring and helpful.

Below is the article excerpted from Burufly :

Though in recent polls by CNNgo.com rendang was voted as the numero uno in the World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods, the wider array of Indonesian food is still very much “off the radar” and among the least known of major Asian cuisines.  You might more familiar with Vietnam’s pho bo or sushi from Japan, but when the waiter in Jakarta offers you gado-gado or soto betawi, you might raise your eyebrows and ask further explanation about those dishes.

What Indonesian dish do you most want to try? Or do you already have a favorite? We enlist 9 restaurants in Jakarta where we guarantee you to have a good time savoring the taste, presentation, and ambiance. Some might be considered as pricey while others promise a unique yet simple gastronomical experience that might end up being the highlight of your journey in Jakarta.

Lara Djonggrang

This premise combines heritage and taste splendidly. Real antiques adorned the old Java décor, while the food is artfully presented inside a giant seashell or traditional pottery. Open for lunch and dinner, Lara Djonggrang (a legendary beauty who believed to be the one responsible for the creation of Prambanan temple in Central Java only in one night) might be the only place in Indonesia where you can have food that was inspired by Majapahit court culinary bonanza.

Bunga Rampai

Indonesian food served with international manners, everybody loves how Bunga Rampai (or flower bouquet) presents simple food but using the highest quality ingredients. Set in a Dutch colonial home and lavishly decorated with beautiful furnishings and flowers, this is the best place in Jakarta to dine in style. We recommend you to try the yummy Putik Sari Dua Rasa (fried strips of chicken and dory fish).

Hidangan Baru

We mentioned rendang earlier, so of course we have to put a Padang restaurant in our list! You will find many Padang (the capital of West Sumatra) restaurants in Jakarta but we pick this humble premise for your enjoyment... Located in the heart of old Chinatown, they serve authentic dishes that are praised by many, from rendang, spicy chicken, to fish curry. As you sit in, the table will quickly be set with numerous small platters filled with highly-flavored and often spicy food. You eat what you like and get charged only with what you consumed.

 Beautika

This is not a beauty parlor per se, but a place where you can appreciate Manadonese culinary expertise. This style of food is greatly influenced by seafood,.. In here you can taste mackerel or tuna fish, roasted or sautéed. The food here can be very spicy so be careful to what you order. If you have more adventurous appetite, we dare you to enjoy paniki, the tasty grilled little bats!

Gado gado Boplo

Vegetarians will love this place as they are famous for their salad. Gado-gado is a mixture of several kinds of steamed vegetables and peanut sauce. You can add some spices for more flavors though.  This eatery might lead you to other finding such as tempe (soybean cake) and krupuk (crackers). Gado Gado Boplo is great for delivery, so if you are in your hotel room and tired of the boring room service, dial them up.

Sate Khas Senayan

With many branches around the city, you can spot this restaurant easily. This place is famous for its sate or satay, grilled meat or chicken served with peanut sauce. Sate Khas Senayan also serves other famous dishes from Indonesia such as nasi goreng (fried rice), ayam goreng (fried chicken) and traditional soup that are worth a try. You should also try Tahu Telr, a delicious and sweet savory dish. For the dessert ask for mango juice, probably one of the best mango juices in town!

Koko Bogana

This eatery can be pretty difficult to find as it is located off beaten track somewhere in Kebayoran Baru, but definitely a must try. The passionate owner dedicated himself to find delights from broad parts of Java such as nasi toek toek, nasi rembang and soto gombyang. He uses only best produce and moreover, the price is amazingly low for such quality. Don’t forget to check out the counter for sweet treats.

Sambara

Sundanese (an ethnic from West Java) are known to be slender and beautiful people. Much of this is associated to the fact that their style of food is very healthy.  Sambara is a homely establishment that makes you feel like you are eating in the rice fields as you do in Bandung. Try pepes (steamed fish, meat, or tofu in banana leaf) or karedok (raw vegetables mixed with peanut sauce) and you will understand why Sundanese diet can be considered as unique and healthy.

Akiaw

Jakarta is a multi cultural city and is strongly influenced by its residents with chinese heritage. The mixture of Indonesian and Chinese cuisine offers a certain flair, so we  choose this meat establishment to bookmark your trip. This street food is famous for its meatball, served with rice noodles and thick broth, and seasoned with fried garlic, cilantro leaves and chili sauce if you want more flavor (and sweat). They are open in the afternoon and close just before midnight.   

How Do I Know that It's You vs How Do I Know You

As a person working in communication field, I've been (and always) impressed and mesmerized by the advancement of communication device. Here I live in Indonesia, a developing country where we often lag behind developed world (especially in terms of technology). What I feel may not happen to everyone, probably only few of us. Okay, let's say it's my personal experience.

When I was a little kid, I haven't stayed yet in the capital of Indonesia. At that time I lived in a city that's in the intersection of modern and traditional world. To have a fixed telephone line at every home might be an impossible request. The national telephone company had always say that it's hard to reach your area, blah blah blah. Thus, when I needed to make a call to my friend (for homework thingy etc), I went to a phone booth rental. And when I heard my friend's voice, I was impressed,

"Oh, this is how her voice at phone. Is that really her?" And I was happy that I could talk and express something that's in my mind without spending many miles away to a face to face meeting.

 Besides telephone, I also ever been impressed with letter, a traditional mail. At that time I had a classmate went to US and I sent a letter to her (traditional one with stamps), and she got my letter (even though it took two weeks to receive). This might sound silly, but I was really happy doing that.

Although there's a correspondence address (for mail) and designated number (for phone call), sometimes I was wondering "How do I know that it's you?" It's a question showing how mesmerized I was, anyway.

Then mobile phone came for us to have. My Mom had that before me, but then all of our family members used it. Well, on mobile phone (even the very old one), there's a phone book feature. And it's a usual thing right now for us to see a name appeared on our mobile phone screen (when there's an ingoing call). But at that time, my Dad (who's less technology savvy than me) saw a name appeared on my Mom's mobile phone screen, then he's asking us "How does this mobile phone know that this number belongs to Ida?" We just laughed when we heard that.

Then the internet era came, and I used it a lot for chatting (with mIRC and Yahoo Messenger). Chatting to whom? Stranger, from different country, city, etc. At that time I was still in the 5th grade. (you may say that I was strange enough, though). Sometimes the person could say that his name was Shane, living in US (for instance). And some of my classmates even played around by saying that they were boys (but they were girls, in fact). In this platform, same question : "How do I know that it's you?"

Until right now, in the social media era, where Facebook is the king, and over than 80% of internet users in Indonesia are social media users; sometimes around 1/5 of our friends on Facebook are people that we don't know. And by any occassion, there may be some friend requests from people that we don't know, never met before, or maybe we simply forgot. Social media really makes communication becomes way easier than before. It's enabling us to reach people that's (logically) we won't be able to reach. Say it could be celebrity, public figure, industry experts, potential employer, or even the girl next door. Everything becomes visible and possible, until we get confused and ask ourselves "How do I know you?" (whether for case 1:  that finally we get to know and meet the person we want to reach and case 2 : when we get an unidentified friend request).

All in all, the advancement of communication technology shapes our mind generally and shapes our perception towards others. Different era = different way = different question rises in the air. The similar one is the sceptical nature of people, we always try to recall and analyze everything we see.

Have you ever been in the situation of "How do I know that it's you?" or "How do I know you?"

Nike Shoe Boxxxx for Shoes and Nike Lovers (bonus : hints to play the game)

I got a new toy....
Personally, it's seldom for me to play games/apps on Facebook.
But, as I heard that Nike created an app named Nike Shoe Boxxxx, I gave it a try.
This idea is amazing. Personally, I don't have great engagement towards Nike as a brand, but I love fashion and I love shoes :)

So,  Nike Shoe Boxxxx is an app created by Beacon communication (Leo Burnett Tokyo).
The purpose of this app is to bring back the 40 years of this 'iconic' shoes through FB app. Nike shoe boxxxx is as simply as we collect shoes from the whole Nike shoes collection  (since the first until the last collection)  and store them in our Nike shoes collection, get rankings by collecting the most numbers of shoes, and interact with other players.

This app so far has gained over 7k users around the world, with the players mostly come from Japan.
At the first time, this app is a bit confusing. However, there's 'How to Play' tab, and it comes with two languages (English and Japanese).

After we click 'Start', we will be taken into shoe box stacks, then we are to choose the box one by one.
For each round, the number of box that we can get is depends on our level (e.g. 3 boxes per round for level 1, 4 boxes per round for level 2, etc.). Anyway, different box colours and types define the type of the shoes. The brown box (the box that shows up most often) is for the latest Nike collection, the orange box defines the old (or maybe first collection of Nike shoes), etc. (Anyway, I never got a chance for the blue and silver box and it made me so curious).

Hints :
1) When you like 'Nike Sportswear Japan' you get 3 bonus shoes and you can choose any shoes from Nike Shoes List. If you get this chance, make sure that you choose the rare collections.
2) When you invite your friends to try this app, both of you will get one pair of Nike rare shoes as a bonus.
3) When you share your shoes by posting it into your FB, you get one extra chance to get Shoe box.
4) You can play the game again with the same round/chance (according to your level) to pick the shoe box tomorrow (reset at 3AM Japan time)
5) The blinking shiny shoe box is always made for Tailwind Night Track (No.1 in All Shoe collection)

The most fun part of this is when you choose Nike shoe box, and the curiosity you have about what shoe inside the box! You may like it, or you may get a little disappointed.

If you don't like the shoe, no worries, you can trade your shoes with thousand players in the world (or your own friend to make the trade easier).

Hints :
1) When you trade shoe, you and your friend will get one bonus shoe from Nike (added to your collection, but you can't which shoe).
2) A tricky way is to trade with the person you know so it's easier for you or your friend to ask about what each of you want, to be traded with what, and faster confirmation! More tricky way is to trade the same type of shoe (just like what I did in the picture above). Even though the shoe is the same, both of you will get bonus shoe.

To trade, there are several options :
trade with your friends; trade by choosing the shoe you want, or trade with any desired players. If you choose to trade with the players you don't know or haven't friended with you yet on Facebook, it will be harder. Thus, you need to do a little research on their collection and shoe selves, and make a guess of the shoe that they haven't got one but they wish to. Like what I did (on the picture above), I made a trade with players I don't know whom, and as a result they haven't confirmed my request! It's hard just like what I said.

I also got trade requests from several players whom I don't know, I confirmed some of them (if the shoe they offer is nice and as long as they don't ask my favorite shoes).

The picture above is my shoe selves and my Nike shoes collection. You can customize your shelves according to your taste. You can customize the color of the shelves, and organize which shoes you want to display. Personally, I try to organize the same type of shoes at the same row (but with different color). This will make a nice color gradation, haha. Although this is not my real collection of shoes, I feel like I am happy every time I got new shoe and bigger number of collection.

Hint :
When you got your level upgraded, there will be new colors added to modify your shelves and you can display more shoes there (for certain level).

By the time I am writing this post, I already have 39 shoes. The shoes we have determine our level. With 39 shoes, I am in level 3, and to get into level 4, I need to collect 50 shoes. And I am currently in rank 1335th. Because this little game makes me happy, I play this everyday (to get more shoes and surprise).

The picture above is the rank (per the date I am writing this post). You can see here that most of the players are Japanese. And the 1st rank already got 350 shoes and being in Level 7! You might think that there are only few numbers of players who got many shoes, but it's NOT! I found that there is player who already got 127 shoes and he's in ranking 511, Level 5. It means that there are over than 500 players who collected over than 100 shoes. This is a big engagement, seeing that to collect more than 100 shoes, you need to spend more less three weeks (by playing the game everyday).

Hint :
Saying that in your current level you can get three shoe boxes per day, if for one day you skip it over by not playing the game, the next day you won't get the cumulative numbers (you will just get three rounds instead).

The picture above is the Shoe List of Nike. (sort by year). And there are 350 shoes in the list.

2012 Fasting : Digitalized Expression

In 2012, the rate of social media growth in Indonesia is faster than last year. More users, more heavy expression and conversation. In terms of Twitter account, on February 2012, Indonesia is in 5th position of Top Countries behind US, Brazil, Japan, and UK (source : Semiocast). And recently it goes to the 4th rank I believe (source : ComScore). And Indonesia is a country having many netizens tweet so often, making it #3 rank of the chattiest Twitter nation after US and Brazil.

Start from July 21, fasting or Ramadhan officially begin. Another fact is Indonesia is a county with the biggest number of Muslim population, and it seems that during fasting they don't stop tweeting :)

On July 21, Indonesia contributed on the Twitter's Worldwide Trends and that's fasting expression related :

The image above is the Worldwide Trends on Twitter around 6:50 PM. On #1, there is "mEdh bUka pUaSa eAaa cEmenH-cEmenQuH" (very hard to re-write). That phrase means "Happy breakfasting my friends".

Don't know who initiated that phrase and conversation, but anyway, the style of writing in Capital and normal letters abnormally like that is "Ababil" people's style (teenager's style that is trying to create cute and different things but end up as weird), and many adults educated people hate that "Ababil" style.
But did those teenagers create this trend on Twitter? If yes, awesome. Not sure and didn't pay attention about the exact time when that phrase started to crawl on the Worldwide Trends chart, though, but 6:50 PM is the time when Muslim in Indonesia are done with their breakfasting.

Around 15 minutes after that, that trend went into #6 and #1 was something created by Indonesian as well. #PeopleIWantToBukaPuasaWith means "People I want to breakfasting with".

Nah, maybe because it was the first day of Ramadhan or fasting month, then that was a big hype happening on this nation with million users? Anyway, July 21 is Saturday, and Indonesian generally tweets more on weekend. Those two "Indonesian" phrases on the Twitter's Worldwide Trends might represent greeting or expression on the 1st day of Ramadhan. Let's say that "Digitalized Expression" is potentially gaining wider audience. Yeah, the world sees you!

The Platt 101: New York City’s Best Restaurants

The Platt 101: New York City’s Best Restaurants

Planning is an odd job title

Fern Miller, head of planning EMEA at LBi, explains why good planners are usually in great demand...

When I took up my new job at LBi, I used a Facebook status announcement to advertise to my social network that I was interested in recruiting new planners. The response rate was gratifyingly strong, but included several pitches from good, highly capable, friends of mine who work in event management, office services and other useful, organisational roles.

Planning, they all said, was exactly what they were good at. This was personally surprising and professionally interesting: as I say, these were people I have known for some time and who must presumably be baffled at my job title, since I am probably the least organisationally skilled person they have ever met. How on earth did they think I'd managed to hold onto a job for so long let alone become a head of it?

And on a more professional note, it was another reminder that what I call planning doesn't have much to do with what anyone outside an advertising agency might call planning. As I told my friends, what we do in planning in the companies I work at is more like strategy, or creative thinking, or consultancy. Few of us could organise our way out of a cardboard box.

Unlike my previous employers, my new company doesn't define itself as an advertising agency. At the last count, LBi's services included social media strategies, website design and build, CRM strategy and delivery, online communications, branded content development, managed services, analytics, user research, SEO and media, technology and several other disciplines I have no doubt missed off the list... it seems that the deeper you engage with your clients' digital futures, the more things there are to think about. The elegant simplicity of the Pollitt/ King agency account team has fractured into a proliferation of specialists and all-rounders, working together in a variety of combinations according to client needs.

Yet at the same time, there have been a series of industry-wide warnings that planners haven't made themselves invaluable or even necessary to clients. Some of these proliferations of specialists have come together without strategists present at all, and appear, to the general consternation of the planning community, to be functioning rather well. Perhaps our strange title hasn't done us many favours in defining what the point of our role is. Perhaps we have too long harboured an assumption that we'd be required, as the 'clever people'. Perhaps we've become a 'brains trust': awfully intelligent, but not awfully useful...
So, how do our 'new-fashioned' planners make themselves most useful? It seems to me there are many useful ways a smart person could help an agency. Providing a simple understanding of how ordinary folk respond to the messages your brand is putting out in all these newly available channels would be a good start.

As Jeremy Bullmore recently pointed out in his speech at the ICA, this would be an extension of the original vision of the planner as a dedicated member of the team whose job was to consider response rather than stimulus in the creation of marketing campaigns. There are useful roles in providing connections between disciplines too: I see my new colleagues in strategy working with teams comprising user-experience creatives, technologists, mobile specialists and media buyers, providing the overall strategic thread for the team.
There are also fantastic opportunities for those who can use their consumer insight to invent new ways for companies to express themselves, or even to invent new products and services altogether. Lastly, given the current economic climate, people who can use the many sources of data now available to define the value and relative effectiveness of any marketing activity should find themselves highly sought after.

The truth is, good planners are usually in great demand, whichever agency you work in. That's what prompted my original advertisement for more of them. And if they're any good, there will be people throughout the business tugging on the sleeves of people like me to send more of them in their direction.
In light of this, the upcoming IPA course, Excellent Account Planning, is going to call upon those people to tell us what they want from planning, so that our bright young things can consider how they can continue to develop the discipline in the future. My hope is that they'll think of new things to do altogether. Or at least a new job title that makes more sense to my friends.