Project 365

Another heart is broken. Another victim arrives. While you hide inside your cage covered by all your lies, unable to be found.

Uncover your mask, that’s all I ask from you. How hard could that be?! But you choose to wear it. You sacrifice the friendship we had with the mask you cannot lose. Has it been a good protector to you? I wonder.

Just remember that, you can make the world beautiful just by refusing to lie about it*.

Choice is in your hand, my friend. I am not here to interfere.

And don’t ever blame me when I make my own choice. Time is up. Another ship is coming to pick me up. I have to give up on you. Completely.

* Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You

Moving out is my least favorite activity. Ever. Be it across continents, countries, cities, or suburbs. There’s nothing fun about it. You pack your stuff in boxes or plastic bags. Move them to a destination. Unpack and reorganize them again. It’s just annoying! Not to mention the cleaning! 😮

I’ve only lived here for 2 years, but this is the third time that I move out to a new place. Yep, I do that every year and in those years I thought I would never move out again! Kapok!!! But, look at me — unable to settle. Seriously, I really hope this would be my last time to move. It’s tiring.

The good thing about moving out? I get to sort out the things I don’t need anymore. It amazes me how much JUNKS I keep in my room, under my bed. From lecture notes, files, unread letters, to financial statements. It also amazes me how much stuff I have! It keeps on accumulating  every single year! When I go back home every year, I bring those things I don’t need, but at the same time I come back with MORE things! LOL. What’s the point, right?

Hmm, at least, by sorting those things out, I’m able to gather a big box of papers and a bag of plastic materials, ready to be recycled! Great :).

Adjusting to a new place is also not easy. Especially when you live with many other people in one house. I haven’t met the three new housemates yet, so I don’t actually know what to expect. But most of them are working, so it’s good that I’m gonna have the whole house by myself during the day! Hehehe.

I really hope my new place will be homey. I hope I’ll like it. That’s the most important thing. A busy day is awaiting me!

My new room is unfurnished. So I have to buy most of the furniture, like a bed, desk, chair, and wardrobe. I bought the second-hand desk and chair for a cheap price today and it’d be delivered next week (yay!). I’ll get the wardrobe and bed from Jessie. So I thought I didn’t need to buy anything else… (coz I worried about getting it transported!).

But then I realized, where was the FRIDGE!?! There was no fridge in the kitchen!!!! Arrrrgh.

That was one of the most important things! How could I not realize that?! So, yeah I was a bit panic. I only had a week! Fridge was not an easy thing to get.

I quickly checked Marktplaats.nl. I found the one I liked and affordable, but I needed to bid it! Damn! I went over the student mailing list, but no one sold a small fridge. So I sent an ads to the mailing list, WANTED: SMALL FRIDGE. I also put it as my status on Yahoo Messenger and Facebook. I even asked my friends if they knew somebody selling a fridge. See how desperate I was?!?!

Just after a minute I put my status on Facebook, a friend commented it and said that she had a fridge and I could just take it. OMG! This was too easy!!! Hahaha! I couldn’t believe it when she said it! So I could just have it for free!! Yippy!!!! I was so happy… Now, no need to be panic 😉

Alhamdulillah… Thank you for saving me ya Allah…

I was told that my new house was very near to Eindhoven’s Red Light District. Actually, I didn’t realize it until I signed the contract. People had been telling me not to go out really late as the area was quite dangerous. You know… the drunk people, drug dealers, and so on… But I didn’t actually know where the Red Light District was?! So, for the sake of curiosity, I googled it.

It turned out that the Red Light District was only 500 meters away from my house.

Oh, bugger! 😀 Is that the reason why it’s so cheap? LOL.

It never happened to me, but it caught me this time!

I already changed my watch and mobile phone’s time. So I should be able to get the time right, shouldn’t I?! But apparently, I still relied on my laptop’s time in which I forgot to change!

I had an appointment with an agent to sign the contract of my room at 11.30am. When I reached her office, she wasn’t there. So I called her, asking where she was. She told me, "But we have an appointment at 11.30!" And at that time I realized, oh damn, I looked at the wrong clock! In Jeddah, it was still 10.30. Good thing she could come to meet me 10 minutes later, so it was okay.

The second time happened when I was about to go to the campus to do my project assignment with my group mates. When I reached the garage to get my bike, I realized and asked myself, what time was it again?! I was one hour early! So I went back inside, waited for another hour, and change the time appeared on my laptop! 😀

It just feels GOOD to be back! It feels so good to sleep on your own bed! The weather isn’t that cold, yet. Although it has reached —1 degrees Celsius at night, I haven’t really turn the heater on.

Eindhoven is still the same when the last time I left. Leaves have started to turn yellow and fall. I can now do whatever I want. I can smile to strangers. I can laugh as hard as I want.

Freeeeeeedoooooommmmm! 🙂 🙂

I arrived at Schiphol at around 12pm. Jessie picked me up, so we had a looooong talk for the whole 1.5 hours journey to Eindhoven (mind you, I was away for 1 month! A one month talk was compressed to 1.5 hours hahaha). When I reached Eindhoven Station, I went for a quick chat at Burger King with another friend (and my loyal heavy luggage haha). Yeah, what was I thinking right? LOL. Then Angga came over to my house to talk about our group project (already?!). Hehehe. It wasn’t that bad! It was more like a casual talk than anything serious. Actually, it took us few minutes to talk about it; the rest was a catch up! 😀

Alhamdulillah, I arrived in Amman after going through a lot of drama before departure. I almost missed my flight!!! Thankfully, I managed to reach the boarding gate five minutes before it closed. I was so panic!

I had a not-too-bad 2 hours journey to Amman, talking with a Jordanian guy next to me. I never actually had a friend from Jordan, so it was nice to meet a stranger and had a small talk about his country :). In another different setting, I saw a woman who got a UN passport!! I envied her so much! 😮

I’m now sitting alone in my room at Golden Tulip Hotel provided by Jordanian Airlines. I’m having a 9 hours transit. Although I’m in a hotel, I feel like I am in a hostel. Even some hostels are cleaner than this one! Oh well, I got it for free, so might as well enjoy it, right? The internet is free anyway :D.

I can’t wait to be in Eindhoven soon 🙂

Lawan pelarangan buku! Fight against the banning of books!

I’m currently reading Dalih Pembunuhan Massal: Gerakan 30 September dan Kudeta Suharto by John Roosa. This book introduces new evidence about the September 30th Movement (or more commonly G30S), a group of Indonesian soldiers whose action leads to the assassination of six Indonesian Army generals, mass killings around the country, and the transfer of power from Soekarno to Soeharto.  The movement has been described by the Soeharto’s regime as a coup attempt done by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Indonesians who lived or grew up during the Soeharto years were required to watch the movie "Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI" on 30 September every year. The movie, which was no longer shown on TV after the fall of Soeharto, was part of a propaganda made by the Soeharto government to convince the public that PKI was the one to blame. After 45 years since the event took place, it is still not clear who the masterminds behind it are. That’s why I’m trying really hard to read the book (again — it has stopped before).

Even though Soeharto is no longer ruling our country, the book is unfortunately banned by the current government for unclear reasons!

The e-book version can be downloaded from here (in Indonesian only). The original English version is called Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia.

Wasior, a town in West Papua, has been devastated by flash floods due to heavy rain. The official death toll as of Friday was 101, with an estimated 76 others still missing.

It took our beloved President, who used to be good in being prihatin (concerned), three days to speak on the matter and to request on providing special attention on the disaster. He was even defeated by Hillary Clinton, who expressed concern about flooding in Wasior a day after the disaster struck.

Meanwhile, illegal logging in Papua was blamed for floods in Wasior :(.

My prayers for the victims and those who lost their loved ones.

I’ve been very interested in Afghanistan ever since I read Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner which provided me an insight about the country and how cruel the Taliban was. When I first came to the Netherlands, I met an Afghan guy who quickly became a friend. He came to the Netherlands after being granted asylum about 7 years ago and took a Dutch citizenship a few years afterwards. Although not explicitly, he told me that he was thrown in Taliban prison by the regime. I asked him whether Hosseini did an honest portray about Afghan society, and he said yes.

Today, I just finished reading The Bookseller of Kabul written by a Norwegian journalist Ã…sne Seierstad. The book tells a story surrounding the life of a bookseller named Sultan Khan and his large family in Kabul. The author got the chance to live with the family for three months which allowed her to peak through their unique everyday lives. But as I read more pages of the book, I realized that the author focused too much on the negative and backward aspects of Afghan culture, and ignored the fact that Afghanistan had something positive to offer too! I couldn’t help thinking the reaction of the whole family, especially Khan who was depicted as a very unforgiving, merciless,  and authoritarian person.

So I tried to google it and found this interesting article. It turned out that Seierstad was sued for her "inaccurate and invasive" stories by Shah Muhammad Rais, the real Sultan Khan. The court found her guilty of defamation and "negligent journalistic practices" and ordered her to pay more than 31,000 euro in damages to his second wife. The case did not end until here. The other seven members of the family also planned to sue her!

Oh well, the stories that followed are as interesting as the stories in the book :D.