Written by: Grace Debora C.O. (016201200028)

Previously, we have covered several food that some of us will find weird to be eaten in the East Asia region. Now, we move on to the region where I live, South East Asia! Without further ado, here is the list which I compiled from people’s experiences.

1. Durian

This is known as the king of fruit and has a very strong smell with spiky fruit skin, but the taste is sweet with a soft texture. I personally do not like durian (I can only tolerate Bangkok durian). But, most people like it for its distinct taste.

2. Insects

This is the specialty ingredients of Thailand and Cambodia. You can find all kinds of insects being made into street snack in Bangkok, and spiders like tarantula fried as snacks in Cambodia. You might  find these disgusting, but I have personally tasted it in Bangkok, and it actually tastes good like crunchy snacks if you get past the disgust and the shape of the insect itself. Worth trying.

3. Fried Bat

This one is another unique food from south east Asia, and you can find it almost in all regions. I personally never try it firsthand. But, I heard that if cooked correctly the bad smell of the original bat would be removed. Someday, I’ll make sure I try this one.

4. Kopi Luwak

This one is the specialty of Indonesia, my home country. This types of coffee has gained popularity abroad and the price is quite expensive. What makes it unique then? It is called luwak because it is made out of an animal called luwak or civer cat in English, particularly its feces. The breeder feeds these animals with coffee berries, and processes the undigested coffee berries out of the feces. Imagine that!

5. Balut

This one has a fertilized duck egg as the main ingredient. It is usually grilled or boiled and a Filipino street delicacy.

Written by: Grace Debora C.O. (016201200028)

Asia is known for the ability to use everything as the ingredients for food. Some of the weirdest food can be found here in Asia. But first, we will focus first on the bizarre food in East Asia region. Here are several food that will give the word “appetite” a new meaning. Bon appetite!

1. Beondegi (Silkworm Larvae)

Where to find: South Korea
Literally meaning “chrysalis” or “pupa” in Korean, the Silkworm Larvae are a popular snack in South Korea. They are either steamed or boiled, and then seasoned before serving. If you can get through the subtle, nutty aroma, these little guys are crunchy with a unique, strange texture inside.

2. Drunken Shrimp

Where to find: Shanghai
Our first thought of Drunken Shrimp might be the usual style of steaming your shrimps in a healthy dose of wine and alcohol. It gives the shrimp an additional dash of sweetness. The actual Shanghai Drunken Shrimp however, is an entirely different experience – most notably because of the absence of steaming, or any kinds of cooking whatsoever. The shrimps are not only raw, but live! They are served bathed in strong liquor, which helps to make the shrimps less feisty, and you eat the still twitching body right away after you decapitate the poor fellow.

3. Tuna Eyes

Where to find: Japan
If you can handle your food staring back at you, feasting on tuna eyes should come as a pleasure. Except for the bizarre situation of having to look at your food in the eye, they are actually pretty tantalizing for its fatty, jelly-like tissues around the eyeballs. Some prefer to eat it raw, albeit the fishy taste, others would rather steam or fry it alongside garlic or soya sauce to spice it up. Selling for less than 100 yen (approximately US$1) in Japan, this is a popular local delicacy worth trying out!

4. Baby Mice Wine

Baby Mice wine is a traditional Chinese and Korean “health tonic”. This amazing concoction consists of rice wine mixed with fermented baby mice. According to local folk medicine, this stuff can help cure all kinds of ailments from asthma to liver disease.

To make it, days old mice babies who don’t even have hair or open eyes are dropped into a bottle of rice wine and left to sit for about a year. The finished product has been described as tasting like “roadkill mixed with gasoline”.

5. Horse – Basashi (Japan)

You may well have had sashimi at a Japanese restaurant before, but perhaps not like this. Raw horse meat is served with the sashimi and a drizzle of soy sauce on the side. If you go to a local bar around Japan, you could get this as finger food with your beer. And if that doesn’t scare you, the sweet and smooth meat is also used to make basashi ice cream.

6. Dog – Bosintang Soup (South Korea)

This highly prized dish is still served in traditional South Korean restaurants, despite a ban on dog meat in the country. Pieces of dog are boiled and mixed with green onions, leeks, ginger, garlic and Taro stalk. A particular mint herb known as perilla is also added to disguise the intense smell that dog meat produces when cooked.

7. Chocolate / Ice Cream Ramen Soup

The Japanese candy maker Lotte teamed up with Ghana, the popular chocolate manufacturer to introduce the first ever chocolate flavored Ramen. If you've ever had Ramen noodles, you probably know there's nothing sweet about the spicy soup meal. The chocolate flavored Ghana Miso is nothing short of a bizarre combination of sweet chocolate with salty Ramen soup broth. Some Ramen Shop in Tokyo also serves other startling ramen, such as Vanilla Ice Cream Ramen, Green Tea Ramen and even Yoghurt Ramen.

You might find that some of these food either normal or disturbing to be eaten. Indeed, what is “normal” is different in different culture, especially when it comes to East and West. Probably some will find it disgusting eating insects. But, in Thailand, for example, they make a very delicious snack. Well, if you have a chance, maybe you can give some of the food a try. who knows you might like it after all.

by Kristy Emilia (016201200030)

What is the definition of beauty from your opinion? Fair skin, long hair, red lips? Mostly of people thought that beauty are sort of kind of these things. Eyes, skin color, hair color, eyebrow, lips are the factors that we feel as the measure to define what is beauty. There is one journalist named Ester Honig has started the Before and After project to examine different standards of beauty from across the world. What is she doing in the project? She sent an untouched photograph of herself to different designers from across the globe and simply requested that they “make her beautiful.” The results have been surprising as Honig writes on her website:”“Photoshop allows us to achieve our unobtainable standards of beauty, but when we compare those standards on a global scale, achieving the ideal remains all the more illusive.” 

Here are the picture of her project that already photoshop by designers from across the globe.

We can see from the picture that the meaning of beauty is different from one country to another. The perception of beauty that we always think is true actually different from the perception of beauty from another country. Take example the perception of beauty from Israel, the perception of beauty from Israel is thick eyebrow, strong jaw, and big lips and now compare to the perception of beauty from United States, the beauty for them is have an oval face with sleek make up. Also if we take a look at the perception of beauty from Indonesia, they tend to perceive beauty as someone who have fair skin, nice eyebrows, and pink to red lips. My opinion is that no matter how do you look now and if you ever feel ugly just remember that maybe in another country you will be perceive as someone who is beautiful ;p as we can see that definition of beauty from one country to another is different.. yet nobody is perfect and the perfect beauty is only can be achieve by using photoshop. So just be yourself and always feel confident let people surround you feel the beauty from inside of you :)

Written by Grace Debora C. Ongkowidjojo (016201200028)

Have you ever heard of the term Generation Z? Generation Z is one of the groups of generation established by experts to analyze the generational change and characteristics from the World War era. The earliest generation is the Veterans, then the Baby Boomers, followed by Generation X and the Millenials (or Generation Y). Generation Z is the latter generation consists of those who were born from mid 1990s until early 2000s. They are natives to digital technology. They were born into technology and never experience a life without it. They communicate through social media and the their lives revolve around the internet. They are very open to diversity and very willing to share their opinion and mundane details of life in the social media.

As it happens, this year's presidential election in Indonesia would be the very first election where some older parts of Generation Z are able to vote. As a part of Generation Z myself, the euphoria of the elections, friends sharing news and blogs about the candidates are the very thing I see everyday on every social media I have, Facebook, Twitter, Path, and many more. Many of my friends even "unfriend" or "unfollow" someone who has different preferential candidate on the basis of "cleaning their timeline".

Generation Z contributes almost one third of this year's voters, and since it is in our culture to express ourselves publicly through media and our awareness of the social and political happenings locally or globally, the presidential election has run more rampant online than ever before. People changing their profile picture showing their preference and many online jokes, memes, critical opinions are posted everywhere.

Each generation has its own culture and values based on the environment and advancements of the world. And this will bring different outcome and approach needed in the society. And the natives to digital technology have indeed shifted the way of this year's biggest political event.

Written by Grace Debora C. Ongkowidjojo (016201200028)

Talking about cultural diversity, we cannot deny it from our present reality, especially with the presence of the globalization. Globalization and the rapid advancement of technology have made the contact among people from all over the world easier and higher in frequency. Because of the frequent and easier contact, people are becoming more tolerant and open to the cultures of others. That is why people often call our society now as a global community, living in a global village. Though the statement is moot, it is a fact that we learn about each other, try to understand others, even sometimes adopt each other’s culture and try on new things.

One of the best examples of this is the development in culinary world, which is called food fusion. Food fusion is taking the best out of unique traditional food into a union that creates another food. Food fusion is raging everywhere. Unlike adapting a type of food into local style, food fusion tries to maintain the original uniqueness as well.

In the example below, we have these cute sushi donuts. They keep the palm-sized sushi to form sweet donuts.

Next, is a ramen burger, making the ramen and the beef filling still the highlight point of the food itself.

Then, there is this taco with Korean fried chicken.

There are many other example of food fusion; and maybe you can try to make one yourself, too! Through food fusion rage we can see how people are trying to make the best out of their own culture and introduce it to others. Instead of fighting over our differences, we should celebrate our uniqueness and rich culture. And if you are creative enough like these people, you can also enrich our culture as a global community.

Pictures are taken from Pinterest.

Written by Grace Debora C. Ongkowidjojo
(016201200028)

When we are learning about culture, probably one of the best ways of doing so is through movies. Movies represent parts of certain culture, and they also become tool for creating image and stereotype. But as we watch movies, we are not only learning about our differences, but our similarities as well. That is why movies are remade; to show how things are still the same or maybe it point out our differences.
There in my personal blog, I have posted some movies that are remakes. These movies are Asian movies that are remade into Hollywood movies. I chose so because for the past century, the cinematography world has been arguably dominated by Hollywood.
Now, I would like to mention several good movies that are remade or soon-to-be remade by Hollywood from Asia.

1. The Departed.
The Departed is an Academy Award winning movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, and many other prominent Hollywood stars, that tells a story of betrayal and deception inside a police force. This movie is a remake of Hong Kong movie titled Infernal Affairs, starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung.

2. Hachiko
Many of you must have heard and watched the sad story of a super loyal dog, Hachiko. It is a famous story from Japan and has been made into Japanese movie. Hollywood then remade this movie with the same title that stars Richard Gere.

3. My Sassy Girl and Il Mare
If you are a fan of the current hit K-drama "My Love from Another Star", then you must be familiar with the brassy Cheon Song-yi played by actress Jeon Ji-hyun. The movie "My Sassy Girl" and "Il Mare" are starred back when Jeon Ji-hyun was active. Both tell a romantic love story and are adapted into Hollywood movies with the title "My Sassy Girl" starring Elisha Cuthbert and "The Lake House" starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

Those three movies are with their own flaws and strengths. The Departed, for example, tried to pack up the whole trilogy of Infernal Affairs into one movie. But even so, it brought back four Oscars. Other than those, Hollywood has also done many remakes on horror movies, like One Missed Call, The Grudge, The Ring, and many others. And it is currently seeking for Asian movies with potential plot. Korean drama like "Good Doctor" that tells a story of a sort-of autistic genius doctor, for example, is being courted for a license to be remade by an American TV channel.

Remakes of movies show that despite our cultural differences, some story of life and experiences, such as feelings, are actually felt by people all the same, no matter where you come from. Sure, in remakes, there will be some cultural differences, such as on approaches, habits and languages, but the feelings and main story conveyed are all the same. And this is why watching movies serves as an effective tool in learning culture.

If you have some time or maybe you have watched an original movie and the remake one, you can comment and tell your experience and perspective on the cultural approach taken on both movies.