Project 365

A friend of mine tagged me on Facebook a few days ago. She went to Berlin and found this book which apparently had ME on it. LOL.

So, yes, as you can see, I’m on a cover (and back cover) of a German book, titled Indonesisch Slang: Bahasa Gaul by Bettina David. Published on 2007, this book is all about Indonesian slang. I found it very informative and useful as I learnt quite a lot of new words from this book hahaha. It’s a good book!!! The downside is that it’s only available in German.

Bettina and I used to comment on each other’s blogs back in the days. Since she hid her real name, I used to think that she was an Indonesian. Her blog was written in Indonesian, sometimes using our informal language. Usually, if a foreigner writes or speaks  in Indonesian, you can spot it very easily that he/she isn’t a native Indonesian. But Bettina speaks (both formal and informal)Indonesian, just like any Indonesians do! So that’s why I was surprised when I discovered that she’s a native German!!!

One day, she contacted me, asking me for a permission to use some of my photos published on my online photo gallery. I was honored to be one of the people contacted for this purpose. The picture itself wasn’t THAT good. After all, it was taken with my high school friends… long before she contacted me. But this was my first time to be on a cover of a book!!! So it was so cool!

My boss invited me to see his presentation about the NGO he founded. The event was held in Delft and it was presented for the TU Delft students. It was very interesting, I must say. I had been working on developing the website of this organization for few months now, but I hadn’t really understood how they did it until today! The organization currently focuses on getting African people out of darkness and at the same time creating jobs for them. The concept is to have a docking station so that lamps and batteries can be recharged at affordable prices. This docking station uses a solar energy to supply the electricity for recharging. It can be set up in different villages (through franchising) and will be run by the local people. I like how you can get profits, help people through creative innovation, and create jobs at the same! It’s great! The organization itself is going to expand to other countries and continents in the near future once the first implementation is successful.

After the presentation, I had a meeting with him and few other people to talk about the improvement of the website that we could make. Then there was lunch, of course! Damn, I envied TU Delft students to be honest! They got sandwiches for their lunch! (TU Eindhoven only gave snacks and snacks) The sandwich looked so delicious with many different types of CHEESE. Damn! I couldn’t eat because of Ramadhan of course!!! I was thinking, hmm… could I take some of them home?? Hahaha. Oh I wish I could. LOL. But the good news was: my boss would pay for my transport cost to Delft! Yay! 🙂

I went around Delft for half an hour before heading back. I always loved Delft. It’s a typical Dutch city. Very medieval. Very “Vermeer”. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera. I took the pictures with my mobile phone, hence the poor quality.

Before reaching home, I went to Den Bosch to pick up my residence permit! 🙂 My old permit is supposed to expired today. I was almost illegal! Hehehe. Going to Den Bosch without buying a bossche bol was definitely not a cool thing. So I decided to buy some :). Bossche bol is an EXTREMELY DELICIOUS dessert ever made! It’s a famous one, only available in Den Bosch. As I’m writing this post, I’ve been waiting the time when I can eat. Seriously, I can’t wait. Haha.

I wasn’t planning to do anything today as I only had few hours of sleep. I was still very tired. I just wanted to stay at home. But then at around 12pm a good friend of mine, Arya asked me if I would be interested to join in for cycling. His cousin was in town for a visit and he wanted to show her around. Since today was my last day of vacation before going back to school, I decided to join them for a city tour 🙂

We first went to the lake near our campus. It’s quite a big lake and it’s a really nice place to do picnic. If it was sunny, we would have done that!

Then we went to Evoluon, the UFO-like conference center which was originally built by Philips to house a science museum. Evoluon is one of the icons of Eindhoven. It isn’t a pretty building if you look at it in closer distance, though.

From Evoluon, we cycled towards the south of Eindhoven to the Genneper Parken (Genneper Parks). Nothing much here, except few museums and a water windmill.

In total, we cycled for around 15 kilometers! I could feel my back needed a massage afterwards :P. But it was quite fun. The weather was really gloomy with occasional rain. If it was sunny, it’d be much better! I reached home at around 6pm and dropped dead to sleep right away. I wanted to go to the Turkish mosque for ifthar but I overslept until 9pm! Haha. I was too tired. Great day!

Just some of the pictures of today’s highlights:

This is me and Jessie at an electronic shop, Mediamarkt, amazed by this Samsung’s 3D TV!

And we found the most expensive headphone I’ve ever seen in my life! Yes, the price tag was 399 Euro (which was about US $500 or Rp. 4.6 million)! What’s the special thing about this headphone? It could “reduce” the external noise. For example, if you’re in the airplane, which usually requires you to turn up the volume of your player because of the noise coming from the airplane. But, using this headphone, you’ll most probably no need to do that. Amazing, but useless, somehow. I’d rather spend that amount for a tiny Sony laptop, which was 30 Euro cheaper than the headphone!

Then I went to the graduation ceremony of my friend Reyhan. There were 19 graduands who were given their degrees, but only one person was a female. Awesome! 🙂

After having ifthar at the Turkish mosque, I sat in a cafe with a CouchSurfer from San Diego, the States whom I currently hosted. I had a nice conversation with her. Great evening, indeed!

Phew, what a day.

Look what I got today!!! A book sent by a friend of mine, Mulia who now lives in the UK. I promised her to send the “mim” chocolate letter and she sent me this one! I was so happy when I received it — though I was a bit concern that I got more unread books nowadays. Gotta read them soon!

From another different part of the world, Mayu sent me a message on Facebook. Geez, I didn’t realize we haven’t been in contact for over 2 months already! She’s a close friend of mine who used to be my roommate in Brisbane for almost 3 years! We usually have this regular Skype session, updating on each other’s life. That’s the only way to keep us bonded. One thing that struck me was the closing sentence of her message, which read: “Anything new in your life? Don’t be a stranger!”

I won’t, Mayu. I won’t. I promise I’ll contact you soon. I miss you!

Happy to find this calendar made by my dear friend, Tina 🙂 Miss you, girl!

I met a fellow blogger, Rahmah, who was one of the winners of the 2010 blog competition organized by Nuffic Neso Indonesia. She got an opportunity to attend a summer course at the Universiteit Utrecht for two weeks. So cool, isn’t it?

I realized that it was the first time for me to meet her after having to visit and comment on each other’s blogs for YEARS! 🙂

I had one of the best ifthar today at a Turkish mosque. The foods were so delicious! And there were A LOT to choose from! The picture above only shows the appetizers. I didn’t get to take a picture of the main dish (rice with chicken) and the super sweet baklava.

Alhamdulillah! 🙂

Yeah, I have a new orange friend here. He loves to observe me whenever I’m sitting in front of the computer. And he’s going to make sure that I don’t sit there for too long. Or else… who knows what he is capable of. Seriously. He’s just unpredictable.

See you soon.

🙂