Project 365

I chatted with a friend of mine who had spent quite a number of years in the States, but finally came back to Indonesian for good about a year ago. It’s been sometimes since I last talked to her and it’s always a joy to share each other’s latest updates.

She told me how hard it’s to be in a society where men are expected to be served by their women all the time. Many people think that the relationship between she and her husband are quite strange — merely because they share responsibilities together. These responsibilities are not only about household chores, but it also extends to their daily life as a couple. There are no unwritten rules about who do what. They take turns — naturally. Though for example, the wife is used to make tea for the husband; when she’s tired, the husband sometimes makes tea too. When dinner is served, then no one is expected to put the meals on the plate for the husband. As long as he’s able to do it himself, why should anyone serve for him?

This is what makes me not completely “connected” to Indonesian guys. I’ve been raised in a different environment. My dad, though he’s a busy man, always has time to help my mom. Yes, he never cooks because he doesn’t like it (I don’t think I remember he ever cooked for us. If mom was ill or was tired, he would rather buy us foods). But doing laundry was his job in the house. Gardening too. Cleaning the backyard. Sometimes vacuuming. And many more. I think it’s hard to find the kind of husband (in Indonesia) who sees his wife as a life long partner rather than a server. Even if I can find such a guy, it’d be very hard to implement it because people in Indonesia expect different things. They expect the wife to serve her husband and they’ll try so hard to “enforce” it on other families. I’d say: mind your own business!

But yes, it’s hard to find  the kind of person I describe above. My mom even told me the same thing. If you can find him, that means he has either been abroad (meaning: live. not visit) or was raised in such environment. My dad was a student in Egypt and I figure: that’s how he gets that “behavior” and open minded thinking. People who have lived abroad have completely different mindset than those who have never seen the outside world. Besides being completely independent, they have the chance to see different culture and see how people in different countries conduct themselves. They are able to compare it to what they have been taught to believe in and realize that a few things need to be left out.

A friend told me that I need to find a guy who had lived abroad. Otherwise it’ll be hard for him to fit into me. Or vice versa. That’s true. If only I can peek on my future 😛

Eindhoven’s weather has been quite strange lately. The temperature kept on going up and down. At one point, it reached 6 degrees Celsius. What kind of “spring” was this? This was definitely winter in May! The boots and jackets that I packed in boxes had been taken out again. The sun was nowhere to be seen. Weeks passed with rain and cloudy day. Such a weird weather.

Today was the first day that the weather turned back into normal (10 – 16 degrees). The sun wasn’t shy to brighten people’s day. It was such a beautiful Tuesday. I decided to go out, dressed up (yay! with my summer clothing), and enjoyed the sun. I contacted my friends Indah and Elva and we went to Centrum to do window shopping. It was a great day to be out. The wind was quite chilly — but I could survive with only wearing my flat shoes; although yes many people still wore their boots. I could see many people sitting under the sun, having beer or coffee and enjoying themselves. I used to loath sun, but now I know how it feels like for not being able to see the sun for WEEKS! It’s the most awful thing ever!

Anyway, we had a fantastic time! I always loved to do window shopping, although yes I couldn’t resist to not buy anything. Sadly, there weren’t that many discounts (I’ll keep an eye on that!). I was gonna buy a high heel red shoe that I reaaaalllllyyyy liked, but I decided to wait until I went back to Jeddah. Hmm, or should I buy it now? :P 

It wasn’t the best day for me today. I feel betrayed. Thank God there were few people who were kind enough to be with me and hear my complains. Thank you :-*

I worked for the whole day today in Belgium (I don’t even know the name of the city! Hahaha). I was asked to help at the Indonesian food stall there. It wasn’t so busy coz there weren’t many people. Unlike Dutch people, Belgians were not really open to new things. They didn’t really want to try new foods and were definitely not familiar with Indonesian foods. Most of the people who actually bought our foods were Dutch who lived in Belgium. Many of them were even Indo (people who have some portions of Indonesian blood :P). Yes, we did talk to them and they were extremely friendly. The friendly behavior that they got from their Indonesian blood would never disappear 😀 hehehe. It was a tiring yet fun day! I got an extra pocket money too and had delicious lunch so I couldn’t be more thankful!

It was yet another hectic Saturday. I was picked up by a family friend early in the morning. We planned to go to Het Goed, a huge store selling second hand goods: from furniture, electronic and kitchen appliances, books, to clothing. I didn’t plan to look for anything in particular, but I just wanted to have a look. The store was huuuuge! There were many good and CHEAP stuff, especially the furniture. I bought a 0.5 cent box for my jewelry. I also found an original Dutch football t-shirt for the previous World Cup for only 4.5 Euros!!! What a great bargain! I wasn’t sure at first whether I would buy it because the size was too big (XL), but yeah… I decided to buy it in the end. It was original for heaven sake! (The original t-shirt usually costs about 60-80 Euros! So this was a really good value!) I hope my brother would like it. I also bought a really nice skirt (me? skirt? haha. yeah, rare!) for a cheap price. I was very satisfied!

I went home afterwards before leaving again to attend the pengajian at the Mosque until around 7pm. Then I went to a family friend’s place for a while to kill time and then to Yasmin’s house for dinner. I was invited to her dinner party and her parents cooked the food. They were kind enough to provide me with vegetarian foods 🙂 I met my university friends whom I hadn’t seen for ages! It was a total blast day!

I was invited to a rare cultural event called Indonesia Night (which was quite rare in Eindhoven; as most cultural events happened in Den Haag, Rotterdam, Utrecht, or Amsterdam). The event was held for the purpose of introducing the Indonesian culture to some Dutch students (majoring in chemical engineering) who were gonna do a study tour to some parts of Indonesia.

The event was started with a very interesting presentation by Prof. Nas from Universiteit Leiden about the symbols of many places in Indonesia. He did an extensive research about this topic in many cities, particularly in Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Denpasar, Bukittinggi, and Banda Aceh.

Prof. Nas described Jakarta’s 4 tiered symbolism. The city was first built during the Dutch colonialism time and was centered in what was now Kota (or city center) which was filled with European architectures. During the Old Order (Soekarno’s era), many huge monuments were built, including Monas, West Irian Liberation Statue, and Dirgantara Monument. According to Prof. Nas, Soekarno, who was an architect himself, tried to “neutralized” the city by building these monuments. There were many Dutch or European buildings during that time and Soekarno wanted to display the Indonesian presence or nationalism symbols among these buildings. The New Order era (Soeharto’s) also saw the creation of monuments, one of them was the Sacred Pancasila Monument. In the 1990’s, Jakarta underwent a number of major construction projects; as a result, many high rise buildings started to rise up.

Moving on from Jakarta to Denpasar, the Professor also explained how the traditional Balinese house was constructed. The house was largely consists of a collection of individual separated structures, including the family temple, sleeping pavilion, kitchen, and many more. These structures were located inside a high-walled compound and were organized in such a way that complied to the Tri Angga concept which the Balinese believed. The concept described the three parts: the high (which referred to the sacred mountains or hills), the middle (land), and the low (sea). In terms of the Balinese house, the high referred to the temple, the middle referred to pavilions where they lived, and the sea referred to the kitchen and so on. Prof. Nas even mentioned that the Balinese slept with their head pointing to the direction of the sacred mountain 🙂 This was an interesting concept that I didn’t know about!

After the presentation from an expert, two students gave a presentation about Indonesia. One was a friend of mine, Qonita, who represented Indonesian students who lived in the Netherlands. And the other was a Dutch student who had the chance to live in Indonesia. Both of them gave very interesting and entertaining presentations which I enjoyed very much!

These are the summary of the presentations that they both presented:

• One thing that really stands out about Indonesian people is that we’re really FRIENDLY! Our door is literally opened to anyone. Guests can come unannounced and we’re always ready and happy to receive them to our house. We’re very generous and wants to show our warm hospitality to our guests. When the guests come or are invited to our house, we expect them to eat (and by that we mean HEAVY MEALS are awaited to be served). This is rather different with Dutch. Making appointments are necessary if you want to visit a Dutch friend in his or her house. Visiting Dutch people during dinner time is a big NO-NO. This is considered a family time for them and they are for certain have no foods left for you; because they cook only for the number of people present on the table 🙂 (whilst Indonesians tend to cook more foods, in case somebody else visits). When you visit a Dutch house, expect light foods, coffee or tea, and no more. Of course, nowadays Dutch people interact with many people from different cultures, so some of them behave differently 🙂
• Dutch people are very OPEN. They just don’t hesitate to say what’s inside their heads without considering the feeling of others. On the other hand, many Indonesians, especially the “true” Javanese, aren’t very open. They’re too polite so they try not to hurt other people’s feelings. As a result, they’re not able to say what they really have in mind. They say “yes”, although they’re quite hesitant about it (but they’re hesitant to say “no”).
• Dutch are surprisingly huge. They’re the tallest people in the world. Even the women are very tall! They are white too and as Qonita said: “have pink skin”. LOL. All the western people, including Dutch, love tanned skin, while the Asians, including the Indonesians, would prefer a fair skin (except me, I’m so glad to have this skin color!). The Dutch presenter was actually surprised to find that there was a whitening lotion in Indonesia! 😛 People were obsessed to get white and they would praise her white skin color. In contrast, whitening lotion is nowhere to be found in the Netherlands. There’s a lotion that makes your body tanned or glowing though. Haha!

I was so glad I came to this event! I didn’t expect that it was gonna be this interesting! Knowing other people’s perspectives about your own country was always fascinating. I learnt many things and I had so much fun! The poco-poco dance turned out to be really great and many people took part too 😉

When I was sorting out some papers, I found some feedback sheets written by my classmates about me. These sheets were given during a Communication Skills course and each person had to present some feedbacks (strong and weak points) about each of their classmates. Reading these made me smile again. Some of the points surprised me and made me question: “Really? Do I really have those qualities?” Some of them motivated me to improve myself. While some allowed me to be introspective about myself.

So, let me quote some of the feedbacks about me given by my classmates:

You are enthusiastic. You cope well with people. You are expressive, you listen and motivate. You make people want to listen to you. I like the way you elaborate things. It really inspires.

You are observant. You like paying attention to detail without compromising simplicity and creativity. You easily point out things that are missing and can bring in new ideas.

I like your inquiring character. You are doubting facts and not people.

I get corrupted by your lively presence and creative ideas.

I would describe you as a little miss sunshine, very positive and engaged and slightly chaotic. I’m thinking here about telling ideas.

I think you are very flexible.

You brought inspired [sic] ideas to our group.

I find you to be a well-organized person. This includes your planning, your speech (knowing what to say) and your approach to things in general. This is a point that really stands out for you.

🙂

Jessie and Ari stayed over at my place for a night. We talked about many things; especially about our adorable guys 😛 and relationships in general. Jessie seemed to be too tired and she slept earlier than us; while Ari and I kept talking until Fajr prayer. The good thing was, the Fajr prayer was at 3.15am so I didn’t need to worry about missing my prayer 😉

Anyway, we talked about relationships last night. One thing I noticed about my past relationships was that I tend to get bored easily. I’m not be able to keep the sparkles and chemistry strong enough to keep me going. I’m not able to prevent the flame from perishing. It’s sad, I know. And it’s something that I’ve been trying to find for the answer or the solution for some time now. It irritates me. Could it be because I haven’t find the right guy yet? Or could it be because of myself?!?

I’m still trying to find the answer.

It’s been 5 months since we had the last dinner gathering at my house just before the winter break. Since then, nobody was able to organize a gathering and I wasn’t able to do it at my house anymore as the landlord asked me to use the attic for the tenants only.

I’ve also been quite busy socializing with “other groups of people”. I think I’ve been searching for comforts and trying to get away from my loneliness. I’m tired of always complaining how lonely I am, so I decided to get myself out of my comfort zone and explore for some more friends who can make me belong and connected. Except for one or two guys that I’m close with here, I have a hard time socializing with many of the guys here (and they’re the majority!).

So I’m glad that I’ve found some girlfriends that I’m comfortable with. Jessie and Ari are the two girlfriends I’ve been spending my time with for the past few weeks. We’re dubbed the “three musketeers” as we’re almost always together! 🙂 We’ve had endless fun talks and I always enjoy them! I’ve also been quite close with some friends in Leiden. But as the transport cost between Eindhoven and Leiden is quite expensive, we don’t see each other quite often.

Anyhow… back to the gathering! So this time Qonit and Reyhan (the new happy couple!) were the host. They cooked fried rice, kalasan fried chicken, and vegetarian semur. They also served us delicious appetizers, dumplings-like which I really really loved! I gotta find it in a Chinese store soon! Not to mention there were different types of drinks and desserts that we — the guests — brought. Delicious foods and fun gathering!

— The girl’s corner 😉

— The guy’s corner 😉

Indeed, We have adorned the nearest heaven with an adornment of stars and as protection against every rebellious devil. [So] they may not listen to the exalted assembly [of angels] and are pelted from every side. Repelled; and for them is a constant punishment. Except one who snatches [some words] by theft, but they are pursued by a burning flame, piercing [in brightness].

Sesungguhnya Kami telah menghias langit yang terdekat dengan hiasan, yaitu bintang-bintang, dan telah memeliharanya (sebenar-benarnya) dari setiap syaitan yang sangat durhaka. Syaitan-syaitan itu tidak dapat mendengar-dengarkan (pembicaraan) para malaikat dan mereka dilempari dari segala penjuru. Untuk mengusir mereka dan bagi mereka siksaan yang kekal. Akan tetapi barangsiapa (di antara mereka) yang mencuri-curi (pembicaraan); maka ia dikejar oleh suluh api yang cemerlang.

The stars were created not only to make the sky beautiful, but also to protect the evil spirits (syaitan) from listening to the conversation of the angels.