Project 365

It’s been a week (or more) that almost the whole Europe is panicking about E.coli. Some of my friends are quite careful of what they eat. One of them is even thinking about not eating veggies at all!

How about me?

I just couldn’t care less. The older I am, the more I think that death can happen to anyone tomorrow if Allah SWT wants it. The destiny of each person has been written already. If I were destined to die tomorrow, whether or not I would be infected by the E.coli, I would die anyway! Ok, that’s creepy right?! Hahahaha.

But you know. Veggies are not even banned by the government. It’s different when you eat veggies that are contaminated with E.coli (and you know it before hand), then that’s the same as suicide! But the veggies are still safe to eat! So why bother to be paranoid? Hehehehe.

I was also laughing when people got suddenly afraid when it’s "predicted" that Jakarta would have tsunami or earthquake in few years time. First of all, no one can predict WHEN exactly the earthquake will happen. Second of all, (back to my previous point) if you’re the only person in Jakarta who was destined to live, you would live no matter what! You would live even though the whole Jakarta was flat!

Ok, that’s just me, you know. The ignorant part of my brain ticks in. Hence, this stupid post 😛

I’ve been reading the tweets of mbak Alissa Wahid (yes, she’s the daughter of our former president Gus Dur). Many of her tweets are so interesting — ranging from parenting to relationship. I have to admit that I regret I didn’t “record” or put most of them here. I totally forgot what they were all about now haha…

Anyway, about a month ago (or even more, because this post has been in my pending list), she tweeted about marriage: what husbands and wives (should) expect of each other. Her tweets were based on two books: For Women Only and For Men Only — authored by Shaunti Feldhahn and Jeff Feldhahn. The two books were the result of a nationwide survey in the US and more than 1,000 personal interviews. I think it’s quite interesting and I’m sure most of the information were not that new. But sometimes reminders are what we need! So let’s just refresh our mind again…

In this post, I will focus on For Women Only. Again, this piece is taken from mbak Alissa’s tweets 🙂

Love is all you need. Really?

One thing that mbak Alissa emphasized was the fact that showering men with love and care is not actually enough. A man needs to feel that he is respected and trusted by his wife. That’s what he needs the MOST. His worst nightmare is to be humiliated. Once he feels humiliated and embarrassed, he will feel unloved by his wife and can easily lose his temper.  For us, the women, crying tends to be our response to feeling unloved. But for men, anger tends to be their response to feeling disrespected.

So, while we need unconditional love, men need unconditional respect. Don’t tease him or make “bad” comments about him in front of his friends: “Oh but my husband can’t even fix the tire!”. Don’t question his decision: “Oh come on!! Did YOU really think it’s a good idea?!” or abilities: “Why are you so slow?! Can’t you be a lot faster?”.

The bottom line is, don’t make him feel that he’s not good enough for you. Don’t lower his self-esteem. Don’t make him “less”. Believe him and trust in him and appreciate his efforts (and let him know that!). Give him full support rather than demands. Encourage him.

Criticism is important, but how you say it does make a difference.

Based on research, 74% men would rather be ignored, be alone, or feel unloved than to be humiliated. So, from this point on we can conclude that for men:

respect = love

That’s the formula, people! hihihi. If you wanna feel loved, you have to respect your man first!

This post is actually a note to self (hmm most of my posts serve this purpose actually hehehe). It doesn’t only apply for relationships and marriages. But also friendships. I have to admit though, I do pass out bad comments to guys whom I don’t like. I use that as a weapon to turn them away hahaha. Oh I’m bad!!!

But I do remember, one of my ex asked me at one time, why I would always hesitate to ask him for help. The thing was, I used to do that to all people because I felt “gak enakan”… I just felt that I’d cause them trouble and inconvenience. But for him, apparently, that’s how he showed his love. Protecting and helping me. That’s what made him feels good about himself. And this is only a minor example. It can extend to the fact that a husband provides financial needs to the family. When he provides, he feels powerful as he feels the family depends on him :). He wants to feel depended on because that shows the family actually trusts him (in supporting them).

Being an independent woman also proves to be hard because often time I give a wrong impression that I don’t need him or any guys in general, but that is actually wrong. I don’t think I’m overly independent. There are certain things that I and all other independent women (and all women basically) need. That’s of course will be discussed in the next post, which will focus on For Men Only! Be patient, guys 😛

When you have a lot of things you want to get rid of (and you’re kinda lazy to cook), it’s best to make nasi goreng (fried rice)! Broccolis, zucchinis, shrimps, and mushrooms 🙂 — everything needs to be gone by next week.

♥♥

* I decided to post the series of Parenting 101 that I found through the stuff I read (especially on Twitter), so that I can refer to it again when the time comes 🙂

Research study shows that praising children for their brain and intelligence can have adverse effects on them, especially with regards to their academic achievement. These so-called fixed-mindset children tend to:

• Consider failure as a result of intrinsic factor, i.e. their intelligence. Therefore they tend to think that failure is beyond their control.
• Put an extra emphasis on being smart and “looking” smart rather than trying as hard as they can (and learn from their success or failure)
• Be more reluctant to make efforts and attempts, and to learn from their past mistakes or failure.

So what’s the solution?

Rather than praising children for being smart, parents should have praised them for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, parents should not have said, “I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart.” They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard.” Big difference. This appeals to your child’s controllable effort rather than to mysterious, unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

More than 30 years of study show that children raised in growth-mindset homes consistently outscore their fixed-mindset peers in academic achievement. For example, kids regularly praised for effort solve 50 to 60 percent more hard math problems than kids praised for intelligence. Because these growth-mindset kids believe mistakes occur from of lack of effort, not from a lack of ability, the kids know exactly how to remedy mistakes: simply apply more effort.

With regards to praising, I also have to agree with Nouman Ali Khan that praising someone (anyone, not only kids) boosts their ego. It does more harm than good, although I admit I praise people without me realizing hahaha… I have to be more careful next time!

Source:

• @bincangedukasi
• Huffington Post: Why You Shouldn’t Praise Your Child’s Intelligence

Lagi nunggu apa, neng?

Hahaha. My friend captured this JUST at the right time! I love candid pictures! Oh, and the camera was great too 😉

Well, how can I say write this? I’m getting a bit emotional now.

It isn’t exactly right to say that my only sister is ill. Because most of the time she is perfectly fine. But let me put it this way: for more than 5 years, she’s been struggling and suffering. Almost every year, there’s a time when she has to be sent back to Jeddah and take a break from the university for months. Everyone, especially my parents are worried about her. She has a lot of dreams but somehow her suffering prevents that.

My parents asked me a few moments ago if I’d be willing to live with her for 2 years until (at least) she graduates. They wanted me to take care of her and hoped that I could find a job there. This was a hard decision to make knowing that I got a lot of things I wanted to do (in Indonesia) but I knew that I had no other choices. I gotta do this for sure :(. I never thought of (temporarily) giving up my dreams to someone coz for me it was impossible. But hey, it doesn’t seem impossible anymore. I’m sad, because I’m still in shock but I know I’ll get over it soon.

I ask myself this question: am I not destined to go back to Indonesia? LOL

I hate it when you ask me how I’m doing but can’t be bother to answer the same question I ask you.

Glad it’s over! Phew. Finally I can take a rest a little bit. Our performance at the Festival Muziek op de Dommel was the biggest one so far, targeting the Dutch public audience, instead of Indonesians or students. We didn’t get to perform at the main stage, but hopefully next year we would be able to perform there!!

On that day, we all gathered in the chapel nearby the festival to do our last rehearsal before our performance. Then we walked from the chapel to the venue.

It was so hot on that day! We were all grumpy waiting for the performance at the main stage to finish. We were behind the schedule.

The cutest loyal angklung supporters who never failed to attend the rehearsals right from the beginning 🙂

Conclusion: it was a great performance! I really enjoyed it. The audience seemed to enjoy it too coz we got 2 offers to perform again. Yay!

Photos courtesy of Angga and Xuchen.

Here’s the video of one of our performances, playing Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky.

Visit https://www.facebook.com/AngklungEindhoven for more videos!

Yay! Finally it’s here! The festival that we’ve all been waiting for is coming up very soon. I’m thrilled and super excited. I can’t wait to perform and promote our culture 🙂 I also can’t wait to watch the orchestra. It’s going to be awesome! I’ll post the videos when they’re available.

Since the theme of this year’s festival is Russian music, so we decided to play the following songs (I include the links of the past performances too): Kalinka, Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini v2, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty.

Wish us luck!!!

Faith, like shoes, need to be polished each time. For someone like me, who easily gets bored and forgetful, polishing my faith is a must. I do that by attending Islamic study at the mosque or via Skype. Honestly I don’t attend it regularly, but when I do attend, it means that I really want to.

Recently, I have been caught up with a lot of things that I put this as my secondary activity. It’s bad, I can tell you, because I constantly need a fuel and it’s running out. I suddenly remember, "hey, why not start watching YouTube videos?!" I hadn’t watched them for a little while, so I guess it’s the best time to do it again.

So I’ve been watching a lot of videos related to Islam by many people like Hamza Yusuf, Nouman Ali Khan, and Yusha Evans. I can’t be thankful enough, I’ve been learning so many things from them. To be honest, I find it more effective to listen/watch these videos because when I lost my concentration, I could replay again the parts that I missed. Somehow, it’s hard for me to focus when it comes to religious studies, including those that I attend at the mosque. Watching them on YouTube is a much better approach for me. I can listen to them over and over again, take some notes and make some summaries. I can’t be happier :). I should make this a once- or twice-a-week thing for me.

During my self-study (which was not limited to only YouTube videos, but also blogs, for example the one owned by Suhaib Webb), I found this article about English translations of the Qur’an. I was really surprised to learn that there are two variations of the English translations: the Saudi-endorsed & —financed and the non-Saudi-endorsed. It turned out, there were quite a bit of differences in both translations. The former has some political sentiments inserted (anti-Jews and anti-Christians), as can be seen in the following example.

The last two ayats from Surah Al-Fatihah is supposedly translated as:

Guide us to the straight path. The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray.

But in the Saudi-endorsed translation, it is translated as:

Guide us to the Straight Way. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace , not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians).

There’s NO mention of "such as the Jews" or "such as the Christians" in the original Arabic version!!! So this is misleading!

I wasn’t very happy upon learning it, to be honest. How can the Saudi government do this to the noble Qur’an?! They’re doing it for the sake of their own political agenda!!! I still have to go to the Haram Mosque and see the translation myself and prove that they added something that they shouldn’t have added. But still, I was upset. So I did my own research, exploring different translations, and decided to purchase myself the English translation of the Qur’an by Muhammad Asad, titled The Message of the Qur’an. I just need to make sure I wouldn’t bring this to Saudi Arabia, because this book was banned there hahaha. Yet another reason to put an end to my Saudi residence permit *sigh*.