Project 365

So I stayed in Helmond today with Jessie. We planned on a trip to Berlin, but it didn’t turn out very well. We had a very low budget and we had no friends who wanted to come with us! I didn’t know if we eventually would go there.

We both did nothing so extra ordinary today. Just stayed on bed, chatting, eating, and so on. Having a good company was enough to make me contented. I wonder why I’m becoming more dependent on other people?!

I’m going to stay another night, eventually :D.

I went to Pesta Rakyat (literally: People’s Party), organized by the Indonesian embassy in Den Haag to celebrate our beloved country’s independence day from the Netherlands 65 years ago. The event was held in Sekolah Indonesia Nederland (SIN) in Wassenaar (near Den Haag) — closed to the house of the Indonesian ambassador. It was my first time going to the school. I went there with my lovely friend Jessie and her family.

There were a loooot of Indonesians! There were music performances and food stalls which sold many types of Indonesian foods. I spent quite a lot that day! I just wanted to treat myself nice Indonesian foods, although yes, I was in Indonesia less than a month ago! The foods were of course very expensive compared to the ones in Indonesia, but oh well… If you compared everything in Euro then you would end up not buying anything! I bought some sate for 5 Euro and I was surprised that I only got 3 sticks (tusuk) for that many lontong! Talk about suicide, eh?! Then I also had a cup of delicious cendol and nasi rames for dinner. We were there almost the whole day! When we were too bored, Jessie and I went to Scheveningen beach, but we found ourselves not doing anything over there because it was raining!

The weather was indeed terrible. It was raining the whole freakin day! It was an unusual Dutch weather, to be honest. Usually the rain was quite light and there were some pauses in between the rain. But it just didn’t stop until late in the afternoon. As a result, many people went back home really early. There were not many people dancing too in front of the stage. They were dancing and holding the umbrella, so you could imagine how ribet it was. The poco-poco seemed fun, but I didn’t want to join in because of the rain :(.

But I met my friend Putri today! I was surprised myself but it was a spontaneous meet up! I haven’t seen her for months already and it was great to meet her although yes, we needed another meet up to catch up! I also saw an Indonesian singer Delon, whom I had no idea who he was until Jessie’s mom told me that he was the winner of Indonesian Idol or something LOL. I took a picture with him, as a proof that I met somebody famous :P. Hehehe. To be honest, he’s just okay. Nothing special about him. Not handsome or anything like that. No offence hahaha.

Oh! One thing I forgot to mention is that, there were some people from the RMS (Republik Maluku Selatan) demonstrating in front of the gate of the school, demanding the political prisoner, Johan Teterissa who waved the flag of RMS in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to be released.

After spending our time there for quite a long time, we eventually headed to the house of Jessie’s mother’s friend. While the elders did some catching up, Jessie and I went to the McDonald’s nearby and we had some really nice conversation about the future, Indonesia, the Netherlands’ society, and many more! 🙂

We reached home around 12am and I had decided to stay over at Jessie’s place. It was a good day. I’m thankful ya Allah 🙂

O Believers, if an unrighteous person comes to you with information, you should verify it or else you might inflict harm on a people in ignorance and then end up regretting what you have done.

Hai orang-orang yang beriman, jika datang kepadamu orang fasik membawa suatu berita, maka periksalah dengan teliti agar kamu tidak menimpakan suatu musibah kepada suatu kaum tanpa mengetahui keadaannya yang menyebabkan kamu menyesal atas perbuatanmu itu.

— Al-Qur’an 49:6

In this verse, Allah SWT ordered us to question and verify every information received to make sure it is reliable and authentic. This is a very interesting verse as it relates to our daily life and the thing that has been going on in Indonesia right now 🙂

Yes, the infotainment. The gossips of celebrities. And all those. Why are we — the Indonesians — are so obsessed with these useless information?! What’s so fun about it, really? A lecturer in Bandung told me that when he woke up everyday, he saw infotainment news. When he came back from work, he saw infotainment news. After dinner, another infotainment news. Oh for heaven sake, he thought! Weren’t there any useful news or TV shows that could be shown?? It’s really sad. We believe on those information and judge the people based on what we see on TV. Pathetic. Now, all we care about is the private life of other people who will never make a positive impact in our life in many ways! How about those people who are in hunger? How about those who still have no money to go to school? How about those who are mentally ill, being stranded in the streets? Do we care about them?! AT ALL??

Questioning the reliability of information does not only apply to the infotainment crap (coz I don’t want to call these gossip things as “news”). But it also applies to everything published on the media. We always need to be critical about them. We need to remember that some news are “created” to gain publicity, profits, or to make false information about other people in order to put them down.

This verse is also very much related to how the scholars of Hadith accept narrations. I was even told that Imam Bukhari traveled miles and miles away to meet this one narrator to prove his authenticity and reliability. At one point, the narrator called some birds as if he wanted to feed them. But it turned out he was just lying because he had no foods on his hands. Based on this behavior, his Hadith was rejected by Imam Bukhari. Can you imagine that?! This implies that the collections of our Hadith have been carefully compiled. Those narrators whose reliability is unknown are not accepted by the scholars of Hadith.

Well, the simplest thing I can say is: mind your own business 😀

* Today’s posting is based on the discussion in our weekly pengajian (Qur’an reading & study) 🙂

Phew! What a day!

I was busy cleaning up my room today. Well, I vacuumed the floor and the ceiling (yes! the spiders needed to be gone!) four days ago. So now I “only” had to throw away all the junks and unused things out of my room. I collected all the papers that could be used for scrap papers and I threw some of them which could not be used anymore (but could be recycled). There were piles of them! I hadn’t been removing them since last semester! Wow, talk about major clean up!

I also hung another string which I used for hanging the postcards. I had many postcards (which I got from friends, family, or myself) that I hadn’t had the time to hang them. Because I had to put the nails on the wall so that I could hang the rope/string. But you know, I was bad in this kind of men job thing (although, yes, it was only the matter of driving the nails into the wall using a hammer). So I kept on procrastinating until today. Now I have 2 ropes hanging on my wall for my postcards! 🙂

So far, I got postcards from the States (Yale, Philadelphia, and New York — thanks to my dear Fau and San Fransisco — from my Couchsurfing friend), Japan (from my former housemates, Jenn & Mayu), Australia (Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Hobart — from lovely Wiza), China (from my brother), and other postcards that I purchased them myself from 7 different countries :).

The result of this major clean up was quite satisfactory. Too bad I didn’t take a picture of my room before the clean up. It was messy as hell! Now I’m loving and enjoying my room with a cup of hot chocolate… Lovely.

Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own.

— Henry Rollins

Yes, it is painful. It’s killing me everyday but I gotta move on. I gotta find the light. I cannot be stuck in this tunnel forever.

The truth is that, since I arrived from Jakarta 2 weeks ago, I never cooked. I always ate breads — except if I was invited to a friend’s house, of course. I ate only once a day. I could feel my stomach shrinking! I could feel the lightness of my body. I guess, my eating habit was affected. If I was stressed, I didn’t want to eat.

So today, I decided to cook ayam kecap (chicken with sweet soy sauce). I’ve made it several times and it’s quite easy. It didn’t require a lot of ingredients. It just require me to get up and start cooking.

It wasn’t so bad, indeed 🙂 . I’m quite satisfied. Alhamdulillah.

Ya Allah, please help me to move on. Please don’t leave me alone. I’m desperate.

My future husband is going in with the commitment of traveling around with you & your husband, or else there will be no marriage! And ur husband has to deal with the same commitment!

— Jessie

I have been traveling with a good friend of mine, Jessie for few times and we’re planning for more: Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Indonesia! We’re just so addicted to traveling that every time we go back from vacation, we’re already planning where we should go next! No matter how broke we are, we still travel! LOL!

So today, I chatted with her over the YM and suddenly we were talking about marriage and I was like… “Sigh, I can’t imagine what we’ll be like after we’re married.” Will we still be able to travel again freely? People change. Most people change after they’re married. Well, that’s for certain because they’ll prioritize family first on top of anything else. So Jessie and I made this kind of commitment, which requires our future husbands to agree on any traveling plans we have! Woohooo! We rock! 😛

* Continuing this project again, after 3 months of hiatus — due to privacy concerns. Now this project is powered by WordPress! 🙂

My day started with meeting with a friend to do our assignment for 3 hours. Not fun, but it was combined with good talks and laughter. So it was not as bad as I thought 🙂

Then I decided to go to centrum to find a birthday gift for my friend Ian. I seriously had NO CLUE what to give to him. I wanted to give him something special and unusual but my budget obviously didn’t support it. So I went to Mediamarkt (an electronic shop) to find something that I could buy. As I was searching for something, surprisingly I met my former Macedonian teammate Goran! It was such an unplanned encounter! He was nice and friendly as usual; even invited me for a coffee or something to catch up! Probably we’re going to meet up this week; gonna wait for his email or call. We’ll see.

Anyway, as expected, I left Mediamarkt with empty handed. I found something that I liked, but apparently they didn’t have it anymore — the stock was finished. I went to other electronic stores in the centrum and was very disappointed that the price was waaaaayyyyyyyy out of my budget. It was already 4pm and I still had to go for grocery shopping. So I thought I’d continue this gift hunting thing tomorrow.

I went to Kruisstraat to do grocery shopping and I suddenly remembered that there was indeed another electronic shop in that area. So I went there to check out the stuff that I wanted to buy. Turned out that it was on discount!!! 40% discount! Wohooo… and this was a good and well known brand. So I was so happy about it! This was probably my best gift ever hahaha… I really hoped he would like it 🙂

My day didn’t stop until there. There were too many things happening and I was surprised myself too. I couldn’t reveal it now though. Haha. Well, I’m just still shocked that I decided to do it.

A friend of mine, Ikram called me over the YM and we talked for more than 1.5 hours! It was the longest ever! hahaha. It was fun, I really enjoyed it.

Alhamdulillah for everything 🙂

So the shops were closed. None was opened. So I stayed at home all day. Read stuff. Did assignments. Played games. Talked with friends. And cooked two indomie for dinner.

Not bad 😀

I have to say that today is my most unproductive day EVER. I was supposed to do assignments from the time I woke up; but I ended up playing Bejeweled for hours. Well, I did do my assignments — I started doing them at 11pm. YEAH.

Monday is public holiday in the Netherlands. And I just realized today that the shops will not be opened until Tuesday! I should have gone grocery shopping today!!! I don’t have anything to eat for dinner tomorrow. Hfff, indomie to the rescue, I guess.

In this semester, I got the opportunity to do group assignment with my Dutch classmate. This is the second time that I work with a Dutch. Most of the time, I always paired up with my “usual” friends who are international students, mainly from Romania, China, Korea, and Columbia. It’s convenient to work with somebody you know, because you know what to expect. You know how they work. You know how to handle problems with them if it ever occurs. It’s more to do with convenience and familiarity.

For this course that I take, the lecturer assigned us into groups of two people, mixing the Dutch with the non-Dutch speaking students. There’s one thing that concerns me the most about doing assignments with somebody you don’t know: what if my group partner doesn’t produce a satisfactory work that leads to the failure of the assignment (or leads to unfair amounts of work to be done between us). I’m quite flexible to work with anyone. I don’t mind working with somebody who has less knowledge about the course than me. But I’d expect that he/she to work harder in completing the work. And I normally become more open (especially to criticize and to be criticized) when it comes to group assignments. Even if my groupmate is my close friend, I’ll never hesitate to tell him/her if he/she does something wrong (for example, not coming to the meeting; or not replying emails; etc). I even almost kicked someone out of my group (even though she’s my close friend) because of her behavior that was quite unacceptable to the rest of the group members.

But anyway, I am lucky again that I team up with someone that matches my expectation. He even leads and manages the whole assignment and decides on how to proceed. I’m not trying to be arrogant or something; but I’m usually the one who leads (“voluntarily”) because no one is eager enough to step up; especially when it comes to taking the first step (which is actually just as simple as sending emails to make appointments for the first meeting!) and getting the project started. But this time my teammate leads everything and I’m the one who give ideas, etc. I enjoy it 🙂 I’m kinda tired to be the project leader all the time.

One thing about working with Dutch people (whether at the university or at work) is that they’ll NEVER want to work during weekends or public holidays. Weekdays are the only time when they do assignments/work and many of them don’t even bring those assignments to be completed at home! I admire them for that because eventually they can still get the work done on time although they have to “waste” two days that can be spent on working on assignments. They work very effectively and they fully respect the need of having the time off. Life is not only about work, they say 🙂