Project 365

This video makes me smile everytime I see it. They have such a great idea of turning musical looking like spontaneous one at a big train station in Antwerp, Belgium. Enjoy! 🙂

This is his favorite song from Alicia Keys’ newest album. It’s one of my favorites too. Every time I hear the song, it reminds me of him. I never actually paid attention to the lyrics. But then I realize that this song is about a guy and a girl who are not in a committed relationship, but somehow one of them are starting to have the feeling that’s impossible to ignore.

This storyline is somewhat familiar.

Another interesting talk from TED, this time by Adora Svitak about what adults can learn from kids. The fact that kids are so naive and have much less experience than adults makes them dream with no limits and boundaries. As a kid, I used to do that. I used to dream about traveling abroad during the time when my dad had little money to even support us. But who would have thought that few years later, my dad took the whole family to travel around the Middle East. I also used to dream about studying in an English-spoken country when I knew that it was impossible to even talk about it! But who would have thought that I got the opportunity to set my foot in Australia in 2004? It’s amazing.

Now.. moving on to my dream about setting up a school for lower class to middle class Indonesians in Jakarta. I’m no longer a kid, but I still have this dream. Whether or not I’ll be able to realize this dream is another story. But I just need some support from people around me, especially my own family. Mom supports me, of course, but she has this skepticism (as always) and she thinks that it’s very hard and I shouldn’t be too ambitious about it. Now, I don’t like this kind of attitude. Of course, I’m not expecting it to be easy: building a school with cheap tuition fees but high class teachers… who would think that it’s going to be easy? But positive attitude (including trust) and continuous support is all I need, and that makes me want to dream more, feel motivated, and try harder. I don’t think I mind if I don’t get to reach my dream, but as people say… the experience and the journey to reach such dream is what makes a difference.

If I look back to my life, I realize that high expectations and trust from my parents is the reason how I get into this milestone of my life. I do think my parents place a very high expectation on me, as the oldest child in the family, but if they don’t do that, I’d probably end up doing Bachelor degree in an ordinary university and doing ordinary job. As a person who will end up being a parent later, I’d place a high expectation on my kids too later on. But perhaps I’d take a different approach from my parents. I’d give them freedom to do what they really want and continuously support them without forcing them to be on top of the world every single time. I don’t know how exactly I’m going to approach this, but like I said… I have all these exciting ideas about teaching and educating my kids and I have to read a lot of parenting books… 😀

Damn, I’m proud to be the alumnae of the University of Queensland 🙂

And I miss the delicious pizza at the campus…. 🙁

I never knew this movie existed!!! Titled “Merantau”, it’s the first Indonesian movie about Pencak Silat, our own martial arts. Although it’s directed by a Welsh, damn I’m still proud of it!!! It seems that the director is able to blend our culture and the martial arts together and promote it to the world! (Not like some boring fighting movie!) I wanna watch it one day! 🙂

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter
Togetherness, well it’s all I’m after
Just call my name, and I’ll be there… :) 

for you.

I watched Mariah Carey’s 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden over and over again today. I had been a big fan of Mariah ever since I heard her famous song, Hero, when I was in elementary school. I fell in love with the song instantly. Since then, I listened to her songs, bought all her albums, and watched her video concerts. I even recorded all of her interviews on MTV.

I’m still a fan now, though not as much as I was previously. She still is one the best female singers. But her voice has changed. Her style has changed. Her music genre has changed. The way she sang changed. And for some reasons, it isn’t as good as before. I’ve watched her recent live performances for many times and I can say that Mariah is not able to sing high pitch songs like she usually did. She has difficulties to sing some of her old songs. She also has some problems with her emotion, I’d say. Her emotion and her songs do not connect anymore. At least that’s how I feel.

Anyway, this video shows one of the songs performed by Mariah and Boyz II Men at her 1995 concert. It’s called “One Sweet Day”. It’s one of my favorite songs!!! The song is about the loved ones who has passed away. It’s a sad song!! Enjoy!

“And I know you’re shining down on me from heaven…”

Ken Robinson gave an interesting and funny talk at TED. In his opinion, schools nowadays kill our creativity and the creativity of many children. But, in what way?

As all of us may know, kids are not frightened of being wrong. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original,” said Robinson. But the problem is that: how can they remain to be an “artist” as they grow up? Most children have lost their capacity as they grow older; and as a result, they have become so scared of being wrong. Because this is what schools nowadays teach us about. They have been teaching us that mistakes are the worst thing that we can do. That we can’t make mistakes. We are pressured. And therefore, we try so hard to avoid them. The result is that: schools educate us out of our creativity.

Education system around the world has been created and influenced to meet the needs of industrialism. The most useful subjects for work are definitely at the top: science, maths, etc. People are discouraged to take their path to music or arts merely because of the unpromising job that they would get. But the thing is that different people have different ability. They have different talents. Don’t they have to do something that they really like? Why do we have to kill their creativity and talents when those things are probably the only things they have?

Not to mention the so called “academic inflation” which indicates the whole structure of our education system is shifting beyond our ability and capacity. Years ago, having a high school diploma was enough to get a decent job. But this was quickly shifted to having a minimum of bachelor degree. Nowadays, masters degree is important and will become a necessity in few years time (even now!). I can imagine that there will be time when probably PhD is gonna take the lead. 🙁

One interesting thing that Robinson said is this: we start to teach children from the waist up as they grow up. We teach them how to walk. Dance. Draw. Talk. Then we focus on their heads; and eventually to one side of the head. This is so true! Education has become sooooo focused on the brain, not creativity. High marks are important. But producing the most beautiful and creative work of art is less important. How come we don’t value creativity? How can we come up with something original and new when our education itself doesn’t support this? How can we see the future? 🙂

I encountered this song (The Reason by Hoobastank) out of the sudden. I used to love it! I remember exactly when the first time I heard it! It was in the year of 2004 in Brisbane, Australia and I was still living in The Lodge, which was a student dormitory where I had so many beautiful memories. I was in the dining hall (either for breakfast, brunch, or dinner — I forgot) and this song was played. I immediately loved it! I asked my friend Jenny who sang this song but she didn’t know it. It turned out that this song was played in the radio over and over again so after few weeks, I got to know the name of the band.

When I heard this song again today, it reminded me of those beautiful memories I had in Brisbane with Jenny and Mayu. Miss them terribly!

The Sound of Music was one of my favorite childhood movies. I remember I used to watch the cartoon version of it and became really interested with the story! Then a few years later as I grew older I got to know that the cartoon that I had been watching was actually adapted from a movie! I watched the movie over and over again and I loved it! I think I still have the VCD of the movie back at home in Jeddah! 🙂

One of the things I loved about the movie besides the characters, story lines, and the SONGS, was definitely the scenery! The mountains… the old cities… the palaces… the fountains… the lakes… ahhhh they were just so pretty! Most of the settings were actually in Salzburg, Austria, the city where I’m actually heading to in 2 weeks time (yay!). I can’t wait for it! I really can’t!

I promised myself I’d watch the movie again before I visit Salzburg. So that I can remember them and actually feel related and excited about those locations when I’m there! (I remember when I was in New Zealand, I visited a number of places that became the movie settings of Lord of the Rings. But since I hadn’t watch that any of those movies and I’m still not interested to watch them, I couldn’t really say anything special about those places… except the sceneries, of course!)

So now I’m gonna make it different! I’m gonna be in Salzburg, visit some places, and reminisce about the good old movie scenes… 🙂 It’s going to be so memorable and exciting!

I’m trying to find some movie scenes of the Sound of Music on YouTube (especially those that show how beautiful Austria is), but most of the videos are of low quality. This is the best that I could find so far. And if you wanna watch the full version of the movie, click here (really good quality! not sure how long this link gonna stays tho!).

Enjoy!