Project 365

Here are some statistics related to texting while driving in the States:

• Of all cell phone related tasks – including talking, dialing, or reaching for the phone – texting while driving is the most dangerous
• For every 6 seconds of drive time, a driver sending or receiving a text message spends 4.6 of those seconds with their eyes off the road. This makes texting the most distracting of all cell phone related tasks.
• Texting while driving is about 6 times more likely to result in an accident than driving while intoxicated
• 28% of traffic accidents occur when people talk on cell phones or send text messages while driving

I’m just concerned towards Indonesian people who can’t take their hands off their mobile phones… 🙁

Taken from here and here.

Found this group on Facebook and I thought I put up some points that I really like and that apply to me here 😀 (And I edited some)

So… You know you’ve been in the Netherlands for too long when…

• Walking from your faculty to the cafeteria has become unimaginable. You take your bike, even if it’s for 50meters
• Eating 7 slides of bread for lunch doesn’t scare you anymore
• You think 15°C is warm
• You don’t remember what a mountain looks like
• You still don’t know how to speak Dutch. But your English has improved. You don’t even bother to ask "do you speak English?", you just speak English right away
• You always check the weather before leaving home
• You have 4 seasons in one day
• You know that kapsalon is not a typical Turkish dish, but a hairdresser
• You can ride your bike in the rain, wind and even snow
• You “wash” the dishes with a detergent without rinsing them
• You go to the market and you only buy the stuffs that fit in you bike
• You have mastered the art of riding a bike and drinking coffee/smoking/eating lunch at the same time
• You understand why they don’t serve coffee at a coffeeshop.

When love and respect have evaporated, what more do I have left for you, really?

One evening with Jessie resulted in this “nice” conclusion:

He is an a**h***. He is not worth it for you. And you deserve someone much better than him.

… and some disagreements and arguments, of course :D. Such a nice evening! Hihihi. A slap in the face is all I need now 🙂

One day, I gave a gift to my friend when I was in Indonesia. It was wrapped and that was quite rare because I just couldn’t bother to wrap any gifts that I wanted to give. Anyway, so I gave it to her, she said thank you, and she immediately put the gift in her bag!

At that point, I was offended. Was she a person who didn’t like to receive gifts? Was she too busy to open it? Or didn’t she appreciate it at all? Or what?!

Then I was told that in Indonesia, gifts were not supposed to be opened in front of the giver! It’s not actually polite! I seriously didn’t know that! I really hope I didn’t offend anyone 😐

But then I’m thinking, why can’t we open it in front of the person who gives the gift?! Hmm, let’s see…

From the point of view of the giver, the reason can be that we’re not confident about the present that we give for others. We don’t know if he/she will like it and we choose to be ignorant about it (not wanting to know whether or not he/she likes it).

From the point of view of the receiver, perhaps we don’t know how to react if we don’t like the gift that is given. Indonesians are polite people, we try not to hurt other people’s feelings. Of course, most people would rather pretend that they like the gift. But still, not many people are good with it.

I admit that I’m quite terrible at gift-giving. I call myself an ignorant; I barely notice many details surrounding me, including the things that others are interested in. And I’m extremely forgetful person. Somehow my brain doesn’t allow any details to be kept. It’s a waste of memory, my brain once complained.

So most of the time the gifts that I presented to my friends were not that special. I did feel embarrassed — not to the fact that I gave a lousy gift, but because I didn’t pay attention to these important details about my friends. If these people were part of my life, how could I be unaware about the things that concerned them the most?

But whatever the outcome would be, I’d appreciate if the person opens the gift in front of me. Somehow it feels better that way. And I don’t mind if they tell me that they don’t like the gift. Choosing something for someone else is not an easy job. Everyone has their own preference; when I buy gifts, although I’d picture the person first before choosing the things… in the end, it’s based on my own liking. So I don’t actually blame them not to like my gift. Perhaps, the way they tell me matters the most. At least, I’d expect a little appreciation 🙂

Anyway… now that I know the difference between the two culture, I try to be more understanding. The next time I give/receive a present, I need to remind myself: the Indonesian way or Western way? 🙂 Either way is eventually fine.

I should have not done it in the first place. I knew it would not lead us to anywhere. I knew it should be stopped. But I chose to be ignorant. We chose to be ignorant. Reality was one thing we could not reach. Not even touch.

The next thing I knew, we were strangers. And I was the one who felt miserable. Could there be any other way to end this?

I was invited to a friend’s house for dinner today, i.e. buka puasa (break the fast) together. I had been thinking, hmm… what food should I bring? Should I just bring the atayef that I made yesterday? Or should I make something else? As I was browsing some recipes, I suddenly craved for mahshi, a delicious Arab dish that my mom used to make. It is a stuffed vegetables — usually zucchini, eggplant, or bell pepper stuffed with rice and ground beef. So yeah, I decided to make it!

A friend of mine, Elva, came over in the afternoon. We did grocery shopping and eventually cook together. She helped me with mahshi, which was surprisingly very easy to make (recipe can be found here). We also spent some time talking in the backyard. It was a really nice day! The weather was just PERFECT! Loved it!

After successfully cooking the mahshi, we then went to the friend’s house we were invited to. This was my first time in this year’s Ramadhan breaking my fast together with other people. I had been doing it alone and I didn’t like it to be honest (seriously, stop complaining, Amalia!). And today I felt so happy to be surrounded with friends 🙂

And the mahshi turned out to be delicious! 🙂 Yum!

One of the things I miss about spending Ramadhan in Jeddah is the foods! Damn, I miss those Arab/Mediterranean foods that my mom always made especially during this holy month. Atayef is one of them. It is an Arab version of pancake. It is sold everywhere on streets of Jeddah during the Ramadhan (and it’s only sold during this month!). We used to eat it as an appetizer before the main meal was served.

So today, I attempted to make some atayef. It wasn’t my first time making it actually. I made it last year too and it was quite nice :).

The recipe can be found here. I used a syrup of palm sugar instead of custard to eat it. An ice cream or a normal pancake syrup can be a nice combination too!

Well, at least atayef temporarily heals my homesickness :). Ramadhan seriously improves my cooking mood!

Alhamdulillah, though I couldn’t eat for 17 hours, today’s fasting wasn’t that bad. I did feel so lacking of energy but I was sure that I would get used to it in the end. I intentionally stayed at home today — I didn’t feel the hunger and thirstiness until 2 hours before I had to break the fast.

Anyway, I was quite satisfied that today I was able to read 3 sections (juz) of the Qur’an. I also did some memorizing for juz ‘Amma — I used to remember the whole chapters (surah) in juz ‘Amma but as I got older, I forgot some of them 🙁 . My goal for this year’s Ramadhan is to memorize the whole surahs in juz ‘Amma. Insya Allah.

Tomorrow is my first day of fasting! I hope it’s going to be smooth. I’m planning to stay at home the whole day tomorrow so that I won’t be wasting my energy too much. I need to get used to the whole 17 hours fasting. I used to fast days before Ramadhan, so that by the time I had to start the “real” fasting, I wouldn’t be struggling so hard. But for some reasons, I didn’t do it this time and I really hope I could handle it :). I’m sure I will. Insya Allah.

I spent almost the whole day today being a proofreader for my friend, who’s currently doing his thesis. Just wanted to help, nothing else. I then went to see my friend Yaqing and her boyfriend, Chris in the Centrum. We had dinner together and had such a nice conversation. We hadn’t seen each other for 2 months already! The last time I saw Yaqing was before I went back to Indonesia. I was so glad that she had found someone to be with :). Kinda envy her a little bit haha. But anyway we talked about so many things: politics, our life, and not to forget… our traveling plans! It turned out Chris really wanted to go to Iran! What a coincidence! I’d loooove to join in 😉

I’m quite full with the dinner today. I still have some left overs in the fridge and that’s what I’m going to eat for my sahur. One of the hardest thing about fasting during summer (besides the long duration) is that we only have about 7 hours before Fajr! So, you break the fast at around 9pm, eat some heavy meals and by the time you want to eat for sahur your stomach is still full! Most of the time I eat heavy meals once during sahur, otherwise my stomach won’t take it anymore. I’m still thinking how I’m going to do this, should I just eat heavy meals in the middle, say at 12am… and eat some cookies, deserts, or light foods for iftar and sahur? Yeah, maybe I should try that first.

Ok, time for Qur’an reading 🙂