A Moroccan dress and a book 🙂 Oh! And some postcards as well. I forgot to include them in the picture 😛
Interesting choice of book by my friend… I don’t know why he gave me this book hahaha. I’ve sent all my books to Jakarta. So I’m happy that I have a new book to read, although I don’t know if I’ll read it now 😛
Eid mubarak! Eid saeed! Kullu sanah wa antum bekhair…
It was a great Eid with Indonesian friends and delicious foods! Lontong, gulai kambing, rendang, and so many other foods that I can’t remember LOL. I was too busy eating that I forgot to take some pictures of the food itself! 😛 Well, I didn’t take that many pictures to begin with. There were many photographers with DLSR cameras so all I needed to do was to pose *kidding*. But these are the only pictures that I took.
I noticed two things about these pictures. One was that I looked soooo thin *panic* and second was that I was the only unmarried single woman there! Hahahaha. These women are my close-knit Indonesian Muslim family :). They make me feel "home" and keep me in check every time. Whether I am in Australia or in the Netherlands, I always make sure that I’m close to at least one family. I love spending with families and playing with their kids. I also like the fact that they keep me grounded and always remind me about certain things. Some of them automatically act as my guardian without being asked and I think that’s important — at least for me — to have someone much older than you to rely on, especially when you’re confused on two choices or need an elderly or wise advice :).
Anyway, after spending the Eid with them, I spent the rest of the afternoon with my Dutch friends that I met at the mosque. It was an Eid brunch/lunch a la Dutch :). Breads, cookies, cheese, and different kinds of spreads. It was really nice to see them again! I really enjoyed it! Alhamdulillah.
I used to complain about having no girlfriends here in Eindhoven. I’m sure I’ve written about this a lot in my blog. During my first one year, most of my friends were guys. I’m fine with having them as friends, of course. But they’re different than girls, especially in terms of “curhat”. Not a lot of guys are good listeners I have to say :P. I also love to have friends to sleep over at my place so we can talk all night long. We can’t do that with guys, can we? 🙂
I basically felt so lonely, especially when I was so used to having housemates and roommates for years! It was not until the second and third year that I had girlfriends. But there’s always a downside: none of my friends were Muslims or practicing Muslims. I felt extremely lonely during Ramadan because I would usually be the only girl out of all men sitting at the Mosque’s dining hall. I didn’t feel comfortable at all.
This year’s Ramadan is a bit different, though! I met a number of Dutch converts at the Mosque during the ifthar last week. I never met a convert before so it was a great opportunity for me to ask a lot of questions! (it’s so me, right?! LOL. Always curious about stuff). I met one of them again during the taraweeh prayer yesterday and one of the girls invited me to her house for ifthar! I would NEVER say no to that wonderful offer hahaha. A free ifthar and a chance to know them better — a once in a lifetime opportunity, right?! 😉
There were 2 other Dutch converts invited (so there were three converts in total). Most of them just converted to Islam for only 1-3 years and what’s amazing was that they all wore a hijab! I actually thought that they’ve at least been a Muslim for 5 years, because wearing a hijab (especially in the time of Islamophobia) was a big thing! But it turned out that they were “early” converts. What’s also interesting was that, although two of them were married, they came to Islam because they wanted to, not because of love or any other reasons.
I asked them how their family reacted upon knowing that their daughter was a Muslim. Only one of them had told the family and she said it was very hard for them. She hadn’t tell them about the hijab yet — she would do it one step at a time. Please note that Dutch parents are the most “easy going” parents in the world. As long as their children are happy, they’d accept their children’s decision. I have a number of friends whose husband converted to Islam due to marriage and their parents didn’t object both the marriage and conversion. So I was a bit surprised to know that the family of these girls would not accept their conversion to Islam. They told me that their parents were a practicing “hardcore” Christian and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why their parents found it unacceptable. Anyhow…
The host, Jacky, turned out to be a really EXCELLENT chef! She cooked a lot of foods. Not just foods, but DELICIOUS foods. The soup, biryani rice, raita (yum!!!!!), samousa, and some fruit deserts. My stomach were about to explode eating sooooooo much foods!
I had a lot of fun. It was no doubt the best ifthar I ever had in the Netherlands — ever since I arrived here 3 years ago. I start to wonder why all the good things always come during my last year of living here?! But anyhow, we’re planning to meet up again during Eid insya Allah! 🙂
Meeting a Muslim convert makes me feel so grateful and blessed that I’m a born Muslim. Often time we take this for granted, don’t you think? It’s definitely something that we should be grateful about. Having lived in a non-Muslim majority country for more than 7 years, the time has come for me to live in a Muslim-majority country again. Without a doubt, I’ve enjoyed living here or anywhere in the world. In terms of religion-wise, I’ve learnt and known Islam much better than if I’d in a Muslim country. But with Islamophobia sweeping across Europe, it’s time for me to go back to the country where I can practice my religion freely and where I can wear hijab without being the center of attention. It hurts to constantly hear Islam — my faith and my way of life — to be insulted and ridiculed again and again. Do insult my race or my nationality, but not my religion.
Thank you, ya Allah for always giving me reminders, giving me the best experience of my life, and answering my prayers. I cannot be any happier.
Recently, my friends said that I’m much skinnier than usual. I admit that I haven’t taken care of myself well these past weeks. I eat bread, chocolate, or noodles the whole time. I don’t feel like cooking anything. I just make sure that my stomach is not empty, but I don’t make it full either. But their comments about my skinny body struck me. I’m not fond of "skinny" body because I’m already skinny. How much skinny I can be before I turn into a scary bone creature? LOL.
So I "bragged" about it on Twitter. The next thing I knew was that: I got a food delivery from my "sister" Mulia who was in UK! It was a total surprise! I didn’t expect it at all!!! (obviously… d’oh) She’s so far away and at the same time so considerate!!! I have known her for about 6 years through online/blogging but we never had a chance to meet! We’ve discussed about a lot of stuff, from politics, religion, to personal issues and I consider her as my older sister. But I never expected that she’d be doing this to me! I wanted to cry huhuhu. Some people are just so freakin nice, you know. Anyway, I didn’t know that there’s a website where you can order foods online from different restaurants and be delivered wherever you want! Cool stuff!
The food was delivered right before I was about to have my meal after Maghrib prayer. It was just on time haha. It was good and filling — a typical Turkish food. I still had some left for tomorrow 😉 and I also had some foods packed for me from Jessie’s mom (oh, she always does this for me all the time *cry*). I don’t need to cook for the next few days, alhamdulillah.
The wonder of Ramadhan? 🙂
This was my first ifthar for this year at the Turkish mosque! The photo was taken yesterday. Alhamdulillah, I was very full and I had a great time with friends. There was absolutely nothing to complain about 🙂
* Photo courtesy of my friend Manda, edited by me using Picnik — a very cool online photo editing tool. It’s free!
Today, I put most of the stuff that I didn’t need (now) in boxes and sent them to Jakarta. My precious books, postcards, clothes, scarves (hiks hiks :(), bags, and shoes were shipped via sea. I had too many things with me. Every time I went back to Jeddah, I always brought new things. I brought some clothes that I really liked but I ended up not wearing them. I still preferred my worn-out tops haha.
Anyway, so two boxes were sent already. Let’s see if I still need another box to be shipped at the end of my stay here. But I hope everything will fit in my suitcase. I really need to fly with Emirates to be able to check in a 30kg luggage.
Chatting with my most favorite guy is always full of laughter (and full of ROFL smileys). I showed my brother this super cute picture of panda, because I knew he would not find her cute at all. He was simply annoyed, because it was just a freaking panda for God sake! Hahaha.
It’s no secret that we LOVE to speak in broken Arabic. So much so that our dad was annoyed upon hearing it every time hahhaa. But it’s so funny! We call it a broken Arabic because we can put the verb and noun in any place we want. We basically imitate how the Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and some Indonesians speak Arabic. LOL. The funny thing is that some Saudis use broken Arabic too when they speak with them!!! 😛 The bad thing about it is that I no longer know how to speak in proper Arabic!!! I totally forgot hahaha! I don’t talk Arabic to anyone else except him. This is bad! LOL.
Not a lot of people know that the Arabs use numbers to replace some Arabic letters that do not exist in the Roman alphabet. For example, the letter ‘ain (ع) is replaced with number 3. In the chat above, I wrote the word ba3den which means later. Another example is the word 5alas which means enough/that’s it/finish. The number 5 denotes the letter kha’ (Ø®) in Arabic. The word can also be written as khalas.
For the complete list of alphabets, go to this Wikipedia page about Arabic chat alphabet.
This is a famous Egyptian bread pudding called Umm Ali (meaning: the mother of Ali). According to this website:
Umm Ali (the dish) dates back to Ottoman era Egypt, when legend has it the sultan stopped in a poor village looking for something to eat and the village’s best cook, named Umm Ali, made something akin to this dish. There are other legends too, about a British nurse named O’Malley who may have invented the recipe.
Whatever the history was, what matters the most is that this desert is SOOOOO delicious! It is usually served during Ramadhan.
I remember when I was in Jeddah last year, I was craving for Umm Ali. So we tried to find it and ask people about it. But somehow we couldn’t locate which restaurant served this delicious dish. So my dad took us to a 4-star hotel. Having worked in a tourism business for more than 10 years, he knew most of the people in that hotel really well. From the manager to the security guy. So he asked the chef to make Umm Ali especially for us! Hahahaha. It was the best Umm Ali I’ve ever had!!! EVER. It wasn’t too sweet. The taste was just right on the spot! And it was for free! What more could I ask for?!
My brother (who also came with us to eat Umm Ali) said: “Malu-maluin aja. Dateng kesini cuma mau makan Umm Ali. Gratis pula!” Basically he said that we should be ashamed of ourselves for coming to the hotel only for the sake of Umm Ali! When we finished eating, he popped up the question “That’s it?! We’re leaving now?” Hahaha. Yep. We left and I didn’t feel ashamed at all LOL.
Now I’m craving for this desert all over again. Somehow, the craving and the homesickness always show up prior to/during Ramadhan. Spending Ramadhan in Saudi Arabia is just the best.
I’m going to try making Umm Ali next time! 🙂 (read: when I’m in the mood of cooking). I’ve got the recipe already. Yay.
This is what happened when I didn’t tidy up my room for more than a week. This is what happened when my desk is full of things and stuff. Papers, books, notes. All of them are in one messy desk. I think I need to spring clean my room before Ramadhan.
Speaking about Ramadhan… it’s going to be one lonely month for me. As always, I’m going to miss my mama’s foods!!!! *crying out loud* Hopefully this would be the last time I spend my Ramadhan in a non-Muslim country. I miss the Ramadhan atmosphere in Jeddah. Everyone’s mood is usually very happy and cheerful during this holy month. Everyone smiling. People giving foods on the streets for free. Colorful lights decorating the streets and shops. Taraweeh and tahajjud prayers echoing the neighborhood. The shops staying open until 4am. It just feels so different than here. Yes, I’m homesick. Terribly homesick.
