I don't advertise my birthday, but someone managed to winkle it out, and very kindly presented me with an awesome cappuccino cake, topped by a tactful number of candles.

Apart from that, drinks have been a big theme lately. IndoSaparella, for example, which is nice. Like fizzy Fisherman's Friend, but I don't mean that negatively.

Tembi has been doing a promotion on a real extravaganza of a drink -- cocopandan syrup (which is, for some reason, red), plus passionfruit, lime juice, and coconut flesh. And Milas continue to supply really interesting hot brews. My latest was a tea made of betel leaf, turmeric, and palm sugar. Made my tongue go ever so slightly numb...

Cilok I discussed here.

Meanwhile, there seems to be no end to the things you can do with bananas. You can put them in a spring roll wrapper with some brown sugar and fry them. Or you can make them into sate and sluice them with melted chocolate.

And talking of sate, I had a tangy "sate sosis" for lunch today, which looked a bit like this. This was followed by a curious thing called sweet corn cheese. Sweet corn, vanilla milk, and cheese. I know, to those not used to treating sweet corn and cheese as sweet items this sounds weird... But it works. Honestly.

UPDATE, 9 March: I must note my extremely green weekend. Green rice; green juice, or jus ijen, which involved, according to the waiter, "pineapple and vegetables", and looked a little like this; and a soup bowl containing a veritable pond, complete with pondweed and little fish -- this was cassava leaf soup, which looked like this, and tasted absolutely delicious.