Project 365

Yay! So happy to practice playing angklung again after so long :). It’s not confirmed yet, but we’re planning to perform again next week, this time in the city center! I hope it’s going to happen!!

Finally, I had a chance to watch a performance at Muziek Gebouw Frits Philips! I was browsing the website the other day when I found a free orchestra concert. I quickly booked the ticket. I was planning to book only 4 tickets, but I found out later that I actually booked 8 tickets! So I invited my friends to come along.

It was really nice! I loved it. I was so happy to hear Infernal Dance by Igor Stravinsky LIVE! 🙂 It was refreshing to be here… especially after many hours looking at the computer. Oh how I love my life.

I’m looking forward to yet another free orchestra concert on 2 January!!!

It was snowing SO.HEAVILY. today. ALL DAY. It was the worst I had ever experienced. The country never had this much of snow for one whole day. Today was clearly the exception.

It just happened that today I had so many things to do which required me to go out of the house. I used to live in the center for two straight years, so everything was close by. But it was different this year. I could really feel the hardship of fighting the snow, trying to get from A to B. I almost fell from my bike for many times. It was so hard to keep it balance. It was quite scary. The roads were soooo slippery. Going by car was as much dangerous as going by bike. A friend even told me she hit another car as she couldn’t brake her car.

And you may wonder by now, why didn’t I take a bus?

EXACTLY.

It’s weird not to play angklung for awhile. I miss it.

Yes, I didn’t plan to go out of the house today. But I had to go to my friend’s place for a while. The streets were very slippery! I almost fell from my bike a couple of times. It was truly a challenge to cycle on the snowy roads. Let’s be more careful, yes?

-16 degrees Celsius of windchill! Time to hibernate?

I woke up with this view 🙂 . It was snowing heavily yesterday and I had trouble cycling as the streets were quite slippery. It will even be more slippery today. Cycling can be very dangerous. Well, I’m planning to stay at home today anyway.

Some pictures! 🙂

Performing 8 songs using angklung, after only 1 month of practice!

Me, in red kebaya costume :D. The dress code for women was kebaya and for men was batik, of course! (except this guy on my left hand side…)

The audiences learned how to play angklung too….

… taught by our lovely conductor, teh Ida (teh or teteh in Sundanese means "sister"). The audiences could instantly play Edelweiss! How awesome!

Not to mention, we had special guests from UK and Germany who came specially for this concert!!! They played kacapi suling and rampak kendang.

Finally, a group picture after the concert! These were the people who directly involved in making the concert happened, including the performers, two lovely emcees, stage manager, and photographers :).

Me and Jessie 😉

I’m still waiting for more pictures and a video of the whole concert to be uploaded. Stay tuned!!

* Photos courtesy of mbak Inne. Thank you, mbak!

A CouchSurfer from New York, Johanna, contacted me a few days ago to meet up for a coffee. So I told her to meet at Usine (again!).

It was a really AWESOME afternoon! We got along really well, which surprised me. She’s one year younger than me but she already had a beautiful baby! Oh it made me envy!

She’s really different than most Americans that I met. She’s more open-minded and more open to experiencing other cultures. I asked a lot of things about American culture and I discovered that there were many things I didn’t know! Well, I had a great time talking to her and playing with her baby girl, Bella. Bella was such an active baby! I felt we got along really well too!!! Hehhehe.

I invited her to the Angklung Charity Concert this Thursday and it seemed like she’s more likely to come. Oh I was excited! We were planning to meet up again — this time I promised her that I would be teaching her how to cook Indonesian food! 🙂

Yay! I got three postcards today! Two postcards were from a friend of mine, Ikmal, who recently traveled to Bangkok, Thailand. To answer your question on one of the postcards: no, I’m not scared of the picture hahaha.

Another one was from Qonita who went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA for a conference. She couldn’t find a post office over there, so she gave it to me in person instead.

Thanks Ikmal & Qonita for the postcards! 🙂 I’m so happy! My postcard collections are growing! Yay!