Project 365

The desire to write grows with writing.

— Desiderius Erasmus*

I haven’t been so good at keeping my promise on writing a blog at amellie.net on a regular basis. I used to write a lot of things related to current affairs, women’s rights, and many more. But I realized I had stopped doing that long time ago. Master’s studies have taken away my time and have successfully dropped my writing mood. I used to write a lot in the weekends, but I never did that anymore. I preferred to do other things.

But few days ago I encountered a report published by Human Rights Watch titled "As If I Am Not Human": Abuses against Asian Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia. I read this report with anger and it really disturbed me. This report fueled me to write a blog posting about domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.

Read the full post here 🙂

* Quote taken from Rahmah

Yummy foods at the Turkish mosque today, alhamdulillah 🙂

And I met a really friendly Turkish girl! I always feel happy to meet fellow Muslims, coz I don’t have that many Muslim girl friends here. I’m not picky when it comes to making friends, but it’d be convenient for me to know them, especially when I have to go to the mosque or Islamic events — I won’t be the only girl around.

My boss invited me to see his presentation about the NGO he founded. The event was held in Delft and it was presented for the TU Delft students. It was very interesting, I must say. I had been working on developing the website of this organization for few months now, but I hadn’t really understood how they did it until today! The organization currently focuses on getting African people out of darkness and at the same time creating jobs for them. The concept is to have a docking station so that lamps and batteries can be recharged at affordable prices. This docking station uses a solar energy to supply the electricity for recharging. It can be set up in different villages (through franchising) and will be run by the local people. I like how you can get profits, help people through creative innovation, and create jobs at the same! It’s great! The organization itself is going to expand to other countries and continents in the near future once the first implementation is successful.

After the presentation, I had a meeting with him and few other people to talk about the improvement of the website that we could make. Then there was lunch, of course! Damn, I envied TU Delft students to be honest! They got sandwiches for their lunch! (TU Eindhoven only gave snacks and snacks) The sandwich looked so delicious with many different types of CHEESE. Damn! I couldn’t eat because of Ramadhan of course!!! I was thinking, hmm… could I take some of them home?? Hahaha. Oh I wish I could. LOL. But the good news was: my boss would pay for my transport cost to Delft! Yay! 🙂

I went around Delft for half an hour before heading back. I always loved Delft. It’s a typical Dutch city. Very medieval. Very “Vermeer”. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera. I took the pictures with my mobile phone, hence the poor quality.

Before reaching home, I went to Den Bosch to pick up my residence permit! 🙂 My old permit is supposed to expired today. I was almost illegal! Hehehe. Going to Den Bosch without buying a bossche bol was definitely not a cool thing. So I decided to buy some :). Bossche bol is an EXTREMELY DELICIOUS dessert ever made! It’s a famous one, only available in Den Bosch. As I’m writing this post, I’ve been waiting the time when I can eat. Seriously, I can’t wait. Haha.

• Called IND (the Dutch immigration office) and they told me that I could just go to Den Bosch to pick up my new residence permit. Yay! I was already stressing out that I couldn’t get my permit on time because of the stupid invitation letter that I never got :(. I’m leaving to Jeddah in 10 days and I need the permit ASAP, otherwise I have to pay 40 Euro for the exit and re-entry visa. So when they told me that I just needed my old permit and a passport to pick up the new one, I was relieved! 🙂
• I did a web development job for a new NGO company few months ago. The project has finished but it hasn’t been formally closed. My ‘boss’ called me today and we agreed to have a finalized meeting in Delft on Wednesday. Can’t wait to receive my full pay!
• Contacted a colleague at Philips and asked if he’s still interested to hire me for a thesis project and he told me to come over this week! Alhamdulillah! I couldn’t be more grateful. If I can do this project, it will be better — I’ll get paid (it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing at all!) and I’ll expand my network and contacts which will hopefully make it easier for me to find a job later when I graduate. I hope. I really hope. Ya Allah please open up the opportunity for me.

🙂

I wasn’t planning to do anything today as I only had few hours of sleep. I was still very tired. I just wanted to stay at home. But then at around 12pm a good friend of mine, Arya asked me if I would be interested to join in for cycling. His cousin was in town for a visit and he wanted to show her around. Since today was my last day of vacation before going back to school, I decided to join them for a city tour 🙂

We first went to the lake near our campus. It’s quite a big lake and it’s a really nice place to do picnic. If it was sunny, we would have done that!

Then we went to Evoluon, the UFO-like conference center which was originally built by Philips to house a science museum. Evoluon is one of the icons of Eindhoven. It isn’t a pretty building if you look at it in closer distance, though.

From Evoluon, we cycled towards the south of Eindhoven to the Genneper Parken (Genneper Parks). Nothing much here, except few museums and a water windmill.

In total, we cycled for around 15 kilometers! I could feel my back needed a massage afterwards :P. But it was quite fun. The weather was really gloomy with occasional rain. If it was sunny, it’d be much better! I reached home at around 6pm and dropped dead to sleep right away. I wanted to go to the Turkish mosque for ifthar but I overslept until 9pm! Haha. I was too tired. Great day!

Just some of the pictures of today’s highlights:

This is me and Jessie at an electronic shop, Mediamarkt, amazed by this Samsung’s 3D TV!

And we found the most expensive headphone I’ve ever seen in my life! Yes, the price tag was 399 Euro (which was about US $500 or Rp. 4.6 million)! What’s the special thing about this headphone? It could “reduce” the external noise. For example, if you’re in the airplane, which usually requires you to turn up the volume of your player because of the noise coming from the airplane. But, using this headphone, you’ll most probably no need to do that. Amazing, but useless, somehow. I’d rather spend that amount for a tiny Sony laptop, which was 30 Euro cheaper than the headphone!

Then I went to the graduation ceremony of my friend Reyhan. There were 19 graduands who were given their degrees, but only one person was a female. Awesome! 🙂

After having ifthar at the Turkish mosque, I sat in a cafe with a CouchSurfer from San Diego, the States whom I currently hosted. I had a nice conversation with her. Great evening, indeed!

Phew, what a day.

Look what I got today!!! A book sent by a friend of mine, Mulia who now lives in the UK. I promised her to send the “mim” chocolate letter and she sent me this one! I was so happy when I received it — though I was a bit concern that I got more unread books nowadays. Gotta read them soon!

From another different part of the world, Mayu sent me a message on Facebook. Geez, I didn’t realize we haven’t been in contact for over 2 months already! She’s a close friend of mine who used to be my roommate in Brisbane for almost 3 years! We usually have this regular Skype session, updating on each other’s life. That’s the only way to keep us bonded. One thing that struck me was the closing sentence of her message, which read: “Anything new in your life? Don’t be a stranger!”

I won’t, Mayu. I won’t. I promise I’ll contact you soon. I miss you!

It was a tiring and fulfilling day for me. I have just came back from an ifthar  gathering with an Indonesian community here. I was one of the seksi sibuk (people who are busy because they’re in charge of the whole event). I was standby from 2pm til the end of the gathering! Helping to cook, clean, re-arrange, distribute the foods, and of course eat them! Though I was very tired by the time I reached home, I always loved to help :). It made me happy, somehow.

There were about 25 people came to the gathering. The foods were plenty! And they were so delicious! Again, I ate too much that my stomach complained all the time. I won’t eat again for sahur. It’s enough.

🙂

I had one of the best ifthar today at a Turkish mosque. The foods were so delicious! And there were A LOT to choose from! The picture above only shows the appetizers. I didn’t get to take a picture of the main dish (rice with chicken) and the super sweet baklava.

Alhamdulillah! 🙂

Alhamdulillah, though I couldn’t eat for 17 hours, today’s fasting wasn’t that bad. I did feel so lacking of energy but I was sure that I would get used to it in the end. I intentionally stayed at home today — I didn’t feel the hunger and thirstiness until 2 hours before I had to break the fast.

Anyway, I was quite satisfied that today I was able to read 3 sections (juz) of the Qur’an. I also did some memorizing for juz ‘Amma — I used to remember the whole chapters (surah) in juz ‘Amma but as I got older, I forgot some of them 🙁 . My goal for this year’s Ramadhan is to memorize the whole surahs in juz ‘Amma. Insya Allah.