Project 365

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 😉

Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) is a national holiday in the Netherlands which celebrates the birthday of the Queen of the Netherlands and symbolizes a national unity and togetherness. Queen’s day is one of the most celebrated holidays in the Netherlands, where people dress in orange (which refers to the name of the Dutch royal family, The House of Orange) and gather in the center of the city (in Dutch: centrum) for parties, concerts, etc. The centrum of all big cities in the Netherlands are generally packed with people, with most main roads are closed to cater for many entertainment events. Amsterdam is perhaps the most visited city for the Queen’s Day. A friend of mine told me that even the trains leading to the city had to be suspended due to the exploding number of people in the Central Amsterdam train station.

On this special day, anyone in the country are also allowed to sell things in the streets without being taxed. As I’m not a big fan of being around with drunk people and loud music, I preferred to spend this year’s Queen’s Day helping teh Rita and others selling many things on the market. I got the opportunity to practice my Dutch speaking skill with the customers and Oma Yana (pictured). It was a fun day; we managed to be there from 9am til 3pm and got about 70 Euros!!! I was so happy. The money would be used for our religious activities (i.e. mosque) and donated to Indonesia. I was very satisfied 🙂

I also went around the market to hunt for cheap stuff. I was looking for Scrabble, the game I used to play when I was a teen, but found none (I found the children version though). I bought two beautiful necklaces for 50 cents (both!). It was worth it!

We went home (back to teh Rita’s place) at 3pm and it took us more than half an hour to reach home! All roads leading to centrum were closed for concerts (the music was very loud, it could be heard from as far as teh Rita’s place! — about 2 kilometers from centrum). I was quite tired by then and decided to take a rest about an hour before continuing to cook for our weekly pengajian.

Balinese dancer. I love this picture. So Indonesian. So vintage. So priceless.

Indonesian children 🙂

I recently read news about the government’s plan to impose a 1-hour earlier closing time for pubs and clubs in the state of Queensland. Currently, a lock-out time is 3am (which means people cannot enter entertainment venues after 3am, even though they have been inside before) and shutting time is 5am. The proposed plan aims at reducing the risk of alcohol-fueled violence, which is very common in Queensland by the way. But many young people oppose this plan, of course — and try so hard to stop the government not to impose it.

When I was in Brisbane, I used to live in the center, between the city center and the Fortitude Valley. I remember how unsecured I was to be walking alone at 9pm or even earlier during the weekends (and by the way, Fortitude Valley was the most dangerous place to be in Brisbane at night). People got drunk on the street. Screaming. Laughing. Threw stuff. Fighting. I heard and saw those. It was a scary scene. I loathe to take a night train or night bus because I can smell the alcohol from far away. It’s disgusting! Not to mention to hear those people screaming and swearing! For some reasons, when they got drunk, they became really crazy. And really scary!

How come I’ve never seen the kind of scene in the Netherlands? (Oh I hope I’ll never encounter this!). But still, I sometimes come home at 12am or 2am and I feel okay. I’m always careful, of course; but I’ve never seen such crazy drunk people on the street.

Anyway… after reading the news, I discovered this article titled “A wake-up call to all Australians – not just ‘apathetic’ youth”. I need to cite a number of paragraphs here:

What is staring us in the face is the one thing nobody wants to address – Australia’s drinking culture.

It sounds scary I know, and even worse it’s not an issue reserved purely for the ‘apathetic’ youth. I hate to rain on anyone’s parade but Australia has a drinking problem and it’s about time we took a real hard look at ourselves.

The damage alcohol causes to Australians is all too clear, with 1500 hospital admissions each week and 3,000 deaths per year. Not to mention the increasing public concern of lawless cities spurred on by regular reports of alcohol-related assaults, knifings and glassings. I doubt that a lockout is going to fix these problems, nor will increased police presence. What we’re in need of is a big old shake up.

It’s a scary thing. 1500 hospital admissions each week due to alcohol damage?!?! That’s insane.

Well, I agree with the author; earlier lock-out doesn’t solve the root of the problems. And I bet that violence on the street will likely to increase if the premises are to be shut down earlier. More people will get drunk on the street rather than on the pubs or clubs and that’ll certainly create more problems!

The government runs a survey whether many people would agree on the proposal of earlier lock-out. We’ll see what the end result would be. But I think they won’t make it a go 😀

I went to ICTheek (computer lab) at 8.30am today to do a report assignment with my classmates Shilpa and Li Lun. In the middle of doing the assignment, we caught in a hard-to-stop conversation ranging from traveling, marriage, to culture! (Shilpa is from India and Li Lun is from China; so our talk was very multicultural!)

Talk about marriage… I discover that we — Asians — have similar culture when it comes to wedding. We would invite EVERYONE; from relatives, neighbors, people whom we barely met, to hi-bye friends. What makes me raise my eyebrows is that, most of these guests are our parents’ friends whom you don’t even know about! Seriously, why would you spend so much money for the wedding party of your “parents”? I wonder. Though I complain about it, there’s nothing I can do with it. I can’t really escape from this tradition. If I were given a choice, I would have definitely go for a traditional wedding ceremony attended by only close friends and relatives. I wouldn’t even have any problems if I were not to have any wedding celebrations! I would rather save the money supposedly used for my wedding for my family’s future!

Shilpa told me that she invited 1,000 guests to her wedding few years ago. That’s a massive number! She said that her wedding lasted for almost 1 week. Some small “parties” and celebrations were held and organized in the first few days of the wedding by the bride- and groom-to-be’s family separately. I can’t imagine how tiring it must be for her! Even she thought that the money spent for the wedding was better be spent for something else. But tradition and culture were hard to skip, were they? 🙂

In Betawi culture (my mom is a Betawi by the way), there is a long lasting tradition that if you’re married, you need to give a so called berkat (a basket of staple foods or even cooked meals!) to your family and relatives. The problem is that, Betawi people have MAAAANY relatives. The last time my cousin was married, she had to give baskets of berkat to at least 40 houses! Can you imagine that?!?! I feel like this is such a waste of money! Why would you give staple foods to people who have no financial difficulties at all?!?!? Isn’t it better if you can just give those foods to the people who need the most?!?! Again, I wonder why.

And I wonder whether I can break this tradition if I end up marrying someone. Alright, perhaps I can tolerate the need to throw a wedding party and having to receive unknown guests to my party, but I definitely can’t tolerate having to feed 40 middle to upper class families!!!

Give me a break!

I went to have dinner at Andreea’s place at her Spacebox today. Andreea and I took the Communication Skills class last semester, together with Shilpa, Evans, and Ciprian. There were only five of us in the class, so we knew each other quite well. The class has ended few months ago, so we decided to have dinner together. All five us had to cook and bring a food (potluck). I brought an Indonesian food, gulai, which turned out to be okay (not superb or something 😛 ). Shilpa made some Indian foods (complete with raita and a starter!), Andreea made a roasted pork (which I couldn’t eat unfortunately), while Evans made some bean curry. Sadly to say, Ciprian wasn’t there! He decided not to come in the last minute!! And I wasn’t happy about that!!! But thankfully, Andreea invited her friend so Evans wasn’t the only guy there 😀

Anyway, we had a super great time! Besides the foods (of course!), we did a karaoke. Andreea recorded a video for that and I’m sure it’s awful! Hahaha. She also taught us a dance she did at the student organization; which was quite fun!!!

Next week, a friend of mine, Vanessa, and I are going to host dinner at her place. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know what I’m going to cook (yet!) but I’m hoping that it’s going to be a fun evening! I think there’ll be many people coming (as I kept on inviting people I met!!!). Hope it won’t make me broke hahaha. Can’t wait for it!