Project 365

Such a hectic day today 🙂 Jessie picked me up in the morning to go to her place in Utrecht. I helped her moved; coz she’s moving back to her mom’s in Helmond. There were so many stuff and the car was extremely full! She even felt like the car stood a bit lower LOL. Once we arrived in Helmond, I helped her unpack some of her stuff and re-arrange her room. It was tiring yet I enjoyed being with her 🙂

After the whole moving out-in drama, we went to Eindhoven to attend our friend’s farewell party. We stayed there for quite a while to wait for Ari and Qonita who came all the way from Hamburg, Germany. The four of us went to Helmond again to Jessie’s house and had the second dinner 😛 We talked talked and talked…

This would be the last time I saw Jessie before she’s leaving for Indonesia on Thursday. I’m going to miss her so much! We’ve been spending so much time together these days and it feels weird now that she won’t be around for two months. But anyhow, I really had a great day today 🙂 The sun was shining til 25 degrees Celsius (and I was hoping I got a bit tanned, but apparently not). The laughter. The talk. Everything was great. 🙂

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 🙂

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 can’t keep smiling to find Marge Simpson’s portrait posing as the Girl with a Pearl Earring (picture below). This is a painting by a famous Dutch painter called Vermeer. It’s one of my most favorite paintings :)