Cooking Etcetera is my playground where I can be myself, expressing the creative part of me through cooking, writing, photographing or sometimes simply by playing around with designs and web widgets. These things are so addictive to me that I could spend hours and hours in front of my laptop with just a cup of coffee and a jar of cookies. The passion for cooking and photography was only discovered when we started hopping from one country to the next country as expatriates.

If you don’t find me here, I would be at my second playground at Hopscotchbaby – where I keep journal and photos of our baby girl, Bri. Have you seen her site yet?

Still curious about me? Me too… Sometimes I discover new things about me and didn’t realize they had been there all long. Like my love for graphic design, which was only discovered a few years ago. If I knew this I would’ve been on a different path all long and probably ended up in graphic design school or something. It’s a great way of self-expression, a form of “art” which is not too serious, but fun and playful. A bit like me

So, nope, I’m not a graphic designer by formal education, just by passion. I have, however, earned my living through it in the past. Photography is also something new that I instantly fall in love with. It’s an art in seeing how an individual perceives the world. I think it’s an amazing form of art. I probably owe it to my first cousin, Hilman, who spent his college years perfecting his techniques in photograhy by taking hundreds and hundreds photos of me. He then become a professional photographer. I hope someday I would be one too.

I have a lot of passions in what I do and what I believe in. It’s probably what takes me to where I am, to be with the one person that I believe in, my beloved husband. I used to be in a corporate world, fast tracked my career by hopping from one big brand company to another bigger brand. Although I tend to fall back into airlines business again and again, probably because of my love of travelling. Everybody seems to be. Who would say no to a free trip to Rome for a day and jump on the next flight to Egypt the next day? All those exotic and romantic places….. I still miss flying at times.

Then one day I landed in hospitality business. The perfect combination of travel, lifestyle & corporate routines. It was with Amanresorts. Bali. I was lucky enough to oversee all of the five Aman properties in Indonesia. Little that I knew it was the biggest turning point of my life. It was like a spiritual rebirth.
I stopped searching for something bigger than life. I’ve found it. I came to realize who I was, met my soul mates (soulmate does not necessarily mean Mr. Right, you know) and finally met my future love of my life, Michael. A couple of years later, we were married there. A simple wedding with only closest friends and families in an amazing boutique resort in Nusa Dua.

Michael and I met over a wine tasting in CP spanish restaurant. I was meeting a guy, JR who was the guest speaker on Art & Wine Weekend that we hosted at Amanjiwo, to finalize a couple of details. We were introduced to each other by JR, then after several other wine tastings & business networkings, we were officially dating.

On a holiday in Bali 2005, I called JR telling him about my plan to pop the question to Michael. I already had the ring with me. He asked  “when…?”  -  I said “tonight” … there’s a pause at the other end, then he said “I thought he should be the one doing that”.  I just laughed. To make the long story short, the ring caught the man of my dream off guarded, it was a pleasant surprise . That night, Michael popped back the question to me after a bbq dinner. He wanted to do it properly.  I was over the moon.  The next morning around 6am, a friend texted us – JR had just passed away peacefully in his sleep that morning at 4am.   To JR, I can’t thank you enough. You’re always in our prayers….