Project 365

I can’t believe it was a year ago that I decided to start this Project 365. The purpose was simple enough. I wanted to write more often and remember the things that I did in the past, and more importantly: I wanted to be grateful each and everyday.

I’m a complainer. Most of the time I didn’t realize I was complaining the whole time. And that’s not good at all. It’s not good for me and for the person who listens to my grumble. It needs to stop!

But doing this project forces me to think about something that makes me grateful each day, even though I might face the ugliest problem in my whole life. What I learn from this is that, there must be something good everyday. There must be something that makes you grateful! You just have to stop focusing on the bad thing and start searching for the good thing.

Anyway, in the beginning I was quite skeptical about doing a one-post-per-day project. I knew it would fail at some point. And indeed, it hasn’t been easy. Finding the time and a topic to write is perhaps the hardest thing about doing this project. When I went to Indonesia last year, I didn’t get to write a single post merely because I got no internet at home. As thesis and social life have started to drown me, I wrote less often. The posts became useless over time. But it didn’t stop me from writing anyway. I tried to write anything that I encountered, even though I would missed some days.

As 21 February is approaching very soon (the day when I started writing a year ago),  should I continue writing? Should I stop? Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. It really depends. I’m getting VERY busy and I’m enjoying it, to be honest. My motivation is on the highest level. But I hope I’ll be able to write few posts per week 🙂

Yemen. Libya. Bahrain. Jordan. Iran. Algeria. My hearts are with you all.

Out of all those countries, I so want Gaddafi to go down! He is much worst than Mubarak and Ben Ali COMBINED. He can massacre the whole nation if he wants to.

Kick those dictators out. Long live the freedom! Long live the people!

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky.
And you lift me up out of the two worlds.
I want your sun to reach my raindrops,
So your heat can raise
my soul upward like a cloud.

— Jalal ad-Din Rumi

One of the most beautiful poems of Rumi.

This was our performance in Delft, a small city near Den Haag. With only FOUR days of practice (two hour each), we played it really well, I must say. In this video, we performed a Sundanese traditional song called Pileuleuyan.

We’ve got a number of performances lining up for March and April! Excited 🙂

This was Omar Suleiman, announcing on Egyptian State TV that Mubarak had resigned. The people had finally brought down the regime. Egyptians never felt so free and happy until that day.

Watching Suleiman’s announcement over and over again, one might wonder: who in the world was that guy standing behind him?! Yes, he looked like that ALL THE TIME!!! With his sharp eyes and high-arc eyebrows, he rolled his eyes from left to right, right to left. He just stood there, showing no emotion or whatsoever. His face and eyebrows didn’t change at all for the course of Suleiman’s short announcement. Only his eyes rolled.

It turned out that it wasn’t the first time that he appeared on the televised announcement. This is another one:

Today, I found a Facebook page The Guy Behind Omar Suleiman that has been circulating in the Twitworld.  The photos cracked me up!!! Everyone should check the page out!

In the bid of finding who the guy really was, someone compared him to 4 different people who looked like him, one of them was Ben Ali! Hahaha. ROFL.

He was even replaced by some cartoon characters and KFC’s Colonel Sanders!

And here are other hilarious photos:

ROFL =))

Facebook page: The Guy Behind Omar Suleiman

Too bad I couldn’t watch Al Jazeera when then-VP Omar Suleiman announced the stepping down of Mubarak. I was in the train, on the way to Delft to perform angklung. Mbak Dina called me to deliver the news, that Mubarak has finally resigned! It was one of the happiest moments of my life!

I can’t believe that one day, I’ll go back to a new Egypt with the new president!

Mabrook ya sya3bi Masr!

The sign reads: El-samak yurid esqat el-nezam (the fish demands the collapse of the regime). Didn’t Mubarak get that message?! *sigh*

My new post: Creative & Humorous Egyptians.

Stories like this stripped away my excitement to go back to Indonesia for good.

It took me years to finally be certain about going back. I finally knew what I wanted to do. I pledged to take this as yet another challenge. I wanted to do this. For real.

Then I read about Ahmadiya people being brutally murdered. Then there were church attacks. It hurts me. This is my country. How can they be so cruel and intolerant?! People have been saying to me about provocateurs or some parties being paid to do that for some weird agenda. I don’t care about those. The fact that the government can’t even protect the rights of minority citizens saddens me. This has been happening for years. Yet, nothing was done. I’m extremely disappointed.

Then that story of injustice was spread. An emotional story written by a girl whose mother was jailed for 10 years and was fined 10 billion rupiah (USD 1.12 million). The story showed how rare justice was in our country. I shouldn’t believe her story 100%, but this is too common. She’s not the only one. There are many people who experienced the same thing.

Going back to Indonesia seems to be a burden now. I know that this can’t be changed. The decision has been finalized. There’s nothing I can do right now, except to imagine the beautiful Indonesia with beautiful beaches… Take me back to that dream, please!

I’ve decided now (again) that I’m going to avoid reading any news about Indonesia. I’ll unfollow those Indo tweets. I’ll unsubscribe the newspapers from my Google Reader. I’ll stop reading anything about my country. I know I’m being paranoid, but I don’t want to go back with a heavy heart. I want to go back because I want to. Not because I need to.

The BEST thing about Twitter is that, you can get so much information that is not published in the media. You can follow the events as if you’re there! And that’s what I like and that’s I’m doing right now. I’ve been following Egyptian activists and journalists for the latest news about Egypt. I’m going to put some of these tweets that are worth mentioning (warning: only recent tweets are published here as I didn’t save those that were published last week).

This is my favorite tweet by an Egyptian journalist, Nadia El-Awady:

Your worst day living in a democracy is better than your best day living under a dictator.

She also wrote about losing her camera: (I concatenate multiple tweets here)

I did not cry or cringe when I was tear gassed and shot at by Egyptian police. I did not cry when I saw dozens injured, unconscious or dead emerge from the front lines of fighting with Mubarak police or civilian thugs. I cried when my camera was broken by Mubarak thugs. My camera was my weapon in this revolt. It was the tool that created a role for me. Today, I leave home without my camera. I will not be able to afford a new one for a long time. But I will not be intimidated to stop reporting. I am equipped with two phone batteries and will tweet as long as I have internet. I will continue to give eye witness accounts to international, regional, and local media of what is happening on the ground. And I will resort to old school journalism. I will WRITE. I will write what I witness. I will continue to play my role as a reporter as long as there is still breath within me. My tools are changing but my role remains.

Sarah Abdallah, an activist, posted these tweets:

"We will never be slaves again. We will have our freedom." ~ Slogan being chanted by 2 million protesters in Tahrir Square.

There is no greater power than the unity of a people standing together against oppression.

Another Egyptian activist, Alaa Abd El Fattah, who is the son of Ahmed Seif (a human rights defender & activist who was prisoned and tortured for 7 years in 1983), was in Tahrir Square on 2  February, when Mubarak thugs attacked the peaceful pro-democracy protesters. These protesters tried so hard to protect and safeguard the square from being occupied by the thugs. The battle took at least 15 hours, day and night. He tweeted:

The battle of the [6 October] Bridge is won, at a great cost, at least one more martyr [was lost]. Army was deployed after fact shooting in air. I can’t believe the bravery and determination of revolutionaries. I abandoned the post thinking this was impossible to win. It required rushing en mass under barrage of fire from above and in face of live ammo. The sad truth is no politician in this country is worthy of the support of these heroes. At some stage, I found an elderly university professor throwing rocks next to me, I had to drag him away by force. One of the doctors giving medical aid to protesters broke down and cried while giving report to AlJazeera Arabic. This is how bloody it was.

Last but not least, Wael Ghonim, the admin of We Are All Khaled Said Facebook Page which drove many people to the streets on 25 January, tweeted:

Dear Egyptians, failure is not an option.

Freedom is a bless that deserves fighting for it.

Indeed.

I just realized that I’ve got a lot of things I have to take care of!!! (besides thesis, of course) Here goes the list:

• Indonesian Student Association in Eindhoven (I’m the secretary as well as the vice president)
• Secretary and vice committee of Eindhoven League 2011, which is an Indonesian futsal league. It will be held at the end of April. I’m also one of the people who are responsible in searching for sponsors :-S
• Angklung. We got 3 sets of angklung and we’ve got a number of performances lining up! The next one will be next Friday! (11 February)
• A school project (my first education-related project in which I’m so excited about! I hope it will be a useful experience for the future!)

I love being busy, but I didn’t realize that I had a lot of things to be responsible for! Be positive, work hard, and SMILE! 🙂